New Mexico Museum of Art
Flame Gas Can, 1982 ~ Rick Dillingham (1952–1994)
When I was in the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe recently, this thought-provoking exhibit caught my attention. Could our modern way of life survive without either liquid?
In the spring of 1972, Dillingham began making ceramic gas cans as a comment on the centrality of gasoline to modern life. Patterned after Pueblo ceramic water jars that were essential to Pueblo life for a thousand years, Dillingham began making gas cans more than a year before the Mideast oil embargo in 1973.Artist Dillingham was known for breaking and reconstructing his pottery.
KM