Ceramic artist Molly Hatch came to Sarasota a few years ago at the invitation of the executive director of the Sarasota Art Museum, Virginia Shearer. For inspiration, Shearer took Hatch to Selby Gardens, followed by John and Mable Ringling’s ornate Ca’d’Zan mansion overlooking Sarasota Bay. After touring the exterior with the Ringling’s Curator of Decorative Arts, they ended up in the kitchen.
“Mable Ringling collected different china sets, and there are elements of those that are on display in their kitchen,” Shearer said. “And in their breakfast room, there is a blue and white Dutch Delft … porcelain birdcage. It's a lyrical, beautiful, very feminine object.”
Hatch knew immediately what she was going to do.
When she got home, she went to work researching Dutch, Ming Dynasty and Ethiopian ceramics and Mexican taverna tile. Then, she got to work in her studio.
“She designed a work of art for us that has all the little elements of all of that kind of patterning and design, but abstracted and then blown up on a big scale,” Shearer said.
The project consisted of more than 450 hand-painted earthenware plates.
“It took a couple of years for her to make the pieces, and then she drove down with all the objects wrapped up in her car and she …hand glued all of the plates to the wall. So it's a labor of love.”
Hatch calls it plate painting, and her installation spans two floors and the outdoor loggia at the Sarasota Art Museum.
“It is just a showstopper,” Shearer said.
The installation is called “Amalgam,” and it’s on view through April 2027.
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“Molly Hatch: Amalgam” was commissioned as part of Sarasota Art Museum’s “Inside Out” Program. The site-specific installation spans two floors, visually linking the Jan Schmidt Loggia and Mark & Irene Kauffman Arcade.
The installation consists of more than 450 earthenware plates that Hach hand-painted in white, blue, and gold luster. It’s visible from the museum’s courtyard, framed by four arched windows.
Hatch also incorporated the empty spaces, so that viewers perceive lines and patterns between plates adjacent to each other. The whole composition may also be experienced from multiple points of view, from near and far, inside and outside of the museum.
Shearer said that Hatch had a glimmer of inspiration as she toured the ghost orchids and other plants at Selby Gardens. But her idea for the eventual installation really took shape as they toured the Ringling Museum with Curator of Decorative Arts Marissa Hershon.
“She took us all around Ca’ d’Zan and then to the top of Ca’ d’Zan, where we could overlook the bay,” Shearer noted.
Ca’ d’Zan
Ca’ d’Zan is the historic mansion of John and Mable Ringling. Architect Dwight James Baum patterned it after Doge’s Palace in Venice. The Venetian Gothic-style home overlooks Sarasota Bay. Built in 1926, it’s now part of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
The mansion reflects the Ringlings’ love for Italian architecture. It hosts events like weddings and guided tours. As visitors tour its 56 rooms, they view period decor and art.
Construction cost $1.5 million and took two years to complete. Mable Ringling oversaw every detail, from furniture to frescoes. She died in 1929, just three years after moving in. John Ringling left the estate to Florida upon his death in 1936. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1982. The state restored it in 2002 to preserve its 1920s look.
The museum campus, including the mansion, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours to 8 p.m. on Thursdays.
The installation
There’s no bad time to see the installation, but Shearer said that “Amalgam” takes on a special aura at sunrise and sunset.
“In the morning, it just is a really gorgeous piece. At night, when the sun is setting, the light hits that space and really illuminates these wonderful, recessed spaces in our building.”
The installation works on multiple levels.
“When you're close to the work of art, you can make out those patterns,” Shearer observed. “You can see what looks a little bit like Mexican taverna tile. You can see the Dutch influence there, what might have come from Ethiopia. But when you're at a distance, it looks like a gorgeous pattern of circles that have just blown up, almost like confetti, that sparkle and shine.”
Other influences
Although she studied ceramics during her undergraduate studies, Hatch was heavily influenced by her family’s collections of porcelain, plates, dishes, and other decorative objects that had been passed down from generation to generation.
“So she learned very early on about these wonderful works of decorative art,” Shearer noted. “And after she began to study art herself as a fine artist, she recognized that other people didn't live with these kinds of collections and so there was something special there. So, like many artists, she's drawing on what she knows, who she is, how she was molded. And rather than another portable object that could be put on a pedestal, she had an epiphany that she could take these ceramic objects, hang them on walls, and create plate paintings.”
Hatch has been painting with plates for nearly two decades.
But “Amalgam” is her largest project to date.
Painting with plates
The installation involved far more than merely gluing the plates to the walls of the Sarasota Art Museum.
First, she had to make the plates.
After that, she hand-painted them with the blue, white and gold luster.
Hatch lives and works in Florence, Massachusetts, approximately 1,200 miles away. So her next order of business was wrapping each plate in bubble wrap and then stacking the wrapped plates in her car.
Once she arrived, she had to unwrap each plate before working with the Sarasota Art Museum curatorial team to glue the plates to the walls inside the museum and its second story loggia.
“She had everything diagrammed in advance,” Shearer noted. “Our curatorial team would say she's by far the most organized person we've ever worked with. She knew where everything would go and exactly how many plates she needed to fire. She even fired extras for us in case we had something unfortunate happen, such as a hurricane. She’s really tremendous. We loved working with her. She's brilliant and so thoughtful.”
Just for the record, it took roughly 2,250 linear feet of bubble wrap to safely transport the 450 plates that comprise “Amalgam.”
“It's a lot of bubble wrap, but she saves it because she is she is somebody who is quite active, especially working with major museums with lots of collecting areas and lots of objects on display in their permanent collections,” Shearer observed.
Shearer also noted that while decorative art collections have waned in popularity as younger people show less interest in seeing teapots or spoon sets or the way that the wealthy and the privileged live, curators have really been very energized by what Molly Hatch is doing and have tapped her to come in, look at their collections, get inspired, and make a work of art that then speaks to those collections which gives contemporary audiences an entryway in.
“She's really done a lot of heavy lifting for museums that have collections,” said Shearer, “through her technique of painting with plates.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
