It was an encounter with Chinese scholar stones at the Fogg Museum of Harvard University in 1994 that triggered a long body of work Gregory Pierce has been addressing for the last decade or so. In addition, a variety of abstract Japanese ceramic artists, some functional, some not, bear echoes or parallels to Pierce’s sculptures. They are not vessels, nor hollowed-out sculptures, nor functional allusions in any way. Put another way, what with their roughly textured surfaces, they seem a more brutal version of Ron Nagle – on steroids.