Offerings focuses on three recurring forms in the artist’s practice: bottles, hand sculptures, and platters. Underlying these works is Baral’s long-standing interest in what he calls artifice. For the artist, artifice refers to the objects and gestures people use to signal power, belief, value, and belonging. It is not limited to institutions or ceremony. It exists in everyday life, embedded in the things we hold, display, exchange, and repeat.
The bottles form the core of the exhibition. Each is made individually, with no two exactly alike. Drawn from the familiar spaces of the bar and the grocery aisle, the bottle is a shared object. It moves across class and context, functioning as a common denominator. Installed together, the bottles read both as a field of variation and as a collective presence. In Baral’s framing, the bottle becomes a quiet form of artifice, an ordinary object loaded with social meaning.
Baral’s hand sculptures operate differently. Some extend outward as offerings, holding small objects that suggest value, ritual, or exchange. Others present simple gestures. Direct and scaled to the body, the hands introduce an additional human element into the installation. They acknowledge how meaning is performed physically, through gesture and presentation, while still leaving interpretation open.
The platters provide a flat, frontal surface within the exhibition. Across them appears a recurring leaf or wreath-like motif that has long been part of Baral’s visual language. The shape is decorative but not specific, a repeated form that connects the works without fixing their meaning. On the platters, it functions almost like a mark or emblem, reinforcing the way symbols gain weight through repetition.
Baral formulates his own clay bodies and glazes, mixing raw materials to achieve control over form and surface. His current vitreous clay supports both structural strength and saturated color. Glazes are layered and tested, producing variation from piece to piece.
Together, the bottles, hands, and platters establish a focused presentation of Baral’s ongoing interest in how objects carry meaning. Grounded in everyday experience, the works invite viewers to consider how much of what feels fixed or natural is, in fact, constructed.
Jody Baral is a Los Angeles-based artist working in sculpture and ceramics. He received his graduate degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art and his undergraduate degree from California State University, Northridge. Baral has residencies at Medalta in Medicine Hat, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and participated in the International Ceramic Symposium in Gmunden, Austria. His work is held in notable collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Bunker Artspace (Beth DeWoody Collection), as well as prominent private and corporate collections. In addition to his studio practice, Baral has taught at Otis Art Institute, Loyola Marymount University, and UCLA, and served for many years as Chair of the Art Department at Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles.