The mighty Annabeth Rosen is a consummate New Yorker, but has taught for many years in California (at UC Davis, a historic ceramics powerhouse). This bicoastal biography positions her at the great confluence of American ceramics. When she came into the field in the 1970s, the discipline was still divided into two geographical wings. The East Coast establishment, centered at Alfred where she initially studied, offered technique and historical expertise. California was comparatively revolutionary, a place of macho expressionist posturing. These two trajectories intertwine in Rosen’s work, which is both learned and explosive at once. Her works shown at Object & Thing are part of an ongoing exploration of bundled forms, in which strongly patterned volumes are lashed together with rubber tubing. They refer to the history of ceramics as a globally traded commodity, while also expressing a raw sensuality – a feeling of bodily abundance overwhelming constraint.