Clay around the bay: A sampling of NCECA shows

This week, you’ll see evidence of the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts everywhere — from bigger crowds at your favorite downtown bars to sun-starved potters combing the Bay area’s beaches. So why not get in the game and check out some NCECA-related exhibitions?

The Bay area’s major art attractions — the Museum of Fine Arts and Morean Arts Center in St. Pete and the Tampa Museum of Art  — won’t disappoint. But many smaller venues like the ones listed below offer great shows, too. For a complete roundup, look for NCECA-related shows in our Visual Arts listings at cltampa.com/arts, or go to nceca.net and click on the 2011 exhibitions link.

In St. Pete, 30 businesses have banded together to create clayaroundthebay.com, where you can download a brochure and map of participating venues, which include Craftsman House, Florida Craftsmen, Duncan McClellan Gallery, Interior Motives, St. Petersburg Clay Company and Queenshead Gastro Pub — to name just a few. (A printed brochure is also available at the venues.)

NCECA Exhibition Shuttle Buses will be traversing Hillsborough and Pinellas counties to take art lovers on tours of NCECA-related exhibitions. Visit nceca.net for detailed times, stops and routes. Tickets will be available for purchase on-site at the Tampa Convention Center next to registration March 29-April 1.

Material Matrix: 30 North by 84 West. This exhibit — dubbed after Tallahassee’s longitude and latitude — brings together nine Florida State University-affiliated artists including David Packer, a New York-based sculptor who earned his MFA at FSU in the ’90s. I first saw his work four years ago in Chicago, when he was crafting massive ceramic sculptures of V8 engines and suspending them from gallery ceilings. In Material Matrix, Packer exhibits a small-scale rendition (see above) of a shipping container train car emblazoned with his last name in the style of a multinational corporation. Runs through April 3, Tempus Projects, 5132 N. Florida Ave., Tampa, 813-340-9056, tempus-projects.com.

This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2011.