I met Ashley and Brian a few summers ago at a plant show organized by the Los Angeles Cactus and Succulent Society. My husband Arthur and I were on a journey to elevate our garden experience and we were instantly drawn to and began collecting Happy Hour Ceramics, which buck the trend of the more earthy, roughly hewn pottery sold and displayed at such events. They also turned out to be two of the sweetest, coolest people you could hope to meet.

The aesthetics of Happy Hour are playful and often whimsical, yet there’s a straightforward and steady-handed heft to the graphics, glazes, and silhouettes of the vessels. Ashley and Brian both have visual arts backgrounds and wide-ranging interests, so it makes sense that in their cottage industry collaboration as Happy Hour Ceramics you will see references to Matisse, flower power psychedelia, midcentury modern inspired shapes and patterns, art deco / art nouveau / arts and crafts movements, and much more. It seems a natural progression that they would combine their fine art and design sensibilities to create applied arts that are also at home in a gallery setting.

The variant nature of the work Happy Hour created for this exhibition is akin to the botanical phenomenon of fasciation. A hormonal, genetic, bacterial, fungal, or viral mutation in plants, fasciation may also be brought on by some trauma to the plant such as a bug bite (ouch!). The result—flared, rippled, elongated, or bulbous stalks, fruits, and flowers—can be bizarre and visually stunning. Collectors clamor for the most extreme examples. Arthur and I have some amazing fasciated plants in our garden and we love the reactions we get when we share them with people.

The objects included in this show resemble Happy Hour Ceramics previous work in many ways, but they have been mutated to a degree that heightens their desirability. A quintuple-stacked pot nods to Brancusi’s Endless Column and is adorned with a daisy motif reminiscent of Mary Quant; a large-scale vase in a shape typical of Ming Dynasty ceramics features a Shaker-meets-hippie flower design; on one wall of the gallery, you will find a selection of monochromatic works that invoke the sun-bleached skulls of Georgia O’Keefe or the white-on-white compositions of Louise Nevelson; a series of mosaic tile works, the first-ever foray by Happy Hour Ceramics into the format, resemble breeze block architecture of Mexico City and imagined board games. The pieces here are pushed and pulled in new and unusual ways, causing a visual double-take. The DNA of the work is the same, but the forms of the individual pieces or the ways in which they are displayed reveal wild and pleasant abnormalities.