New York Times Review Printed on Friday April 12th, 2002
"Art In Review"  

Sally Resnik Rockriver is some kind of contender. She has an M.F.A. from Hunter College and is a regular contributor to Sandbox Magazine. She lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., teaching at the Resnik Thermal Lab, which she established in what appears to be a large open barn, judging from her Web site (www.thermallab.com).

Ms. Rockriver's first solo show in New York is a crowded display of small objects, rough-surfaced bowl-like sculptures and experimental fragments. Squint your eyes and you might be looking at open storage for exotic corals and dried jelly-fish in a natural history museum, or a shop for high-end knickknacks destined for chic houses in Palm Springs. But the main impression is of an artist forcefully and fearlessly pushing a medium or two in new directions.

Ms. Rockriver makes what she calls geochemical formations by orchestrating chemical reactions in molten glass and ceramics, largely through heating or cooling. She traps ceramic salt or ceramic glaze in blown glass vessels where the salts explode and the glazes form brightly colored cores. Using sudden cooling, she fringes the edges of ceramic sculptures with drips of calcite glazes that later oxidize into white hairlike crystals resembling frost. She also covers sheets of clay with glassy, crystalline glazes that crack and fissure into random compositions as they cool.

The results of these activities are organic irregular forms, gorgeous colors, strange surfaces and striking contrasts of transparent and nontransparent. Some objects resemble paintings, others volcanic debris. It's not clear if Ms. Rockriver is the next Dale Chihuly, an unusually festive heir to Eva Hesse or a mad, artistically inclined scientist. But she is definitely something.

ROBERTA SMITH