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P rev iew
Birth o f
a Legend
B rau n stein /Q u ay G alle ry
Peter Voulkns -The Montana,
Los Angeles, & Berkeley Tears:
ip so -70s
San Francisco, C alifornia
January 22 - February 21,2009
w w w .bquayartgallery.com
It is more than 60 years since
Peter Voulkos (1924-2002)
became “ hooked on clay” taking
a required pottery class as a G.I.
Bill student at M ontana State
U niversity, from which he grad-
uated in 1951. It did not take
long for him to move from a
m astery o f clay as a purely func-
tional medium, which he per-
fected in college and carried
over into his stint at the Archie
Bray Foundation in M ontana,
w here, with Rudy A utio,
he established a ceramics w ork-
shop in 1952, to a pronounced
segue from production pottery
into abstract expressionism in
L os A ngeles, w here he headed
the new ceramics department
at O tis A rt Institute (1954-58)
and, with a cohort o f students
and fellow artists, brought
about a “ revolution in clay.”
Voulkos’s role as father
o f the contem porary Am erican
ceramics movement was consoli-
dated at the U niversity o f C ali-
fornia, Berkeley (1959-1985),
where he created ever more
original sculptural w orks and
influenced several generations
o f students.
Follow ing the trajectory
o f V ou lkos’s early career, this
survey o f his w ork includes
high-quality functional pieces
such as a 1950s glazed stone-
w are bow l from the M ontana
period; a 1957 vase decorated
w ith a “ slip stencil” technique
O and an experim ental 1959
stonew are sculpture adorned
w ith slips and glazes, both
done at O tis; and several ex-
amples o f w hat becam e a signa-
ture form , his Stack p ie ce s-
Anaqua,
and
UkamO,
both
1968, and
Untitled Stack,
1974,
all made w hile he w as teaching
at Berkeley.
T hough V oulkos’s w ork as
it developed grew increasingly
large, tw o dim inutive w orks
in the show'—
Cup #1
and
Cup
# 2
—each four inches high w ith
slashed surfaces and expres-
sionist glazes, are intriguing in
their foreshadow ing o f larger
sculptural w'orks to come.
In the decades beyond the
scope o f this exhibition,
Voulkos continued to make art
o f a high order, m ostly in
ceramics but in other media as
well, and w'as showered with
honors and aw'ards and exhibi-
tions across the country and
internationally. Though he w as
ultim ately best know'n as a
ceramic sculptor, Voulkos nev-
er lost the connection to pot-
tery m aking—he died w hile on
the road for a tw o-w eek work-
shop at a university, the last
o f the bravura demonstrations
he relished all his life.
A s this show so clearly
proves w ith its stellar exam -
ples, the course o f a career last-
ing more than a half-century
was firm ly lim ned w ithin its
first tw o decades. — b .s.
A related show,
“Voulkos 101: A
Survey Exhibition, ” is at the A rt
Gallery, Diablo Valley College,
Pleasant Hill, California, front
January 26-March 20. Curated by
Sam Jornlin, who maintains the
Voulkos & Co. Catalogue Project,
the exhibition emphasizes
the crucial educational aspects o f
Voulkos’s career.
M uskegon M useum o f A r t
A Stitch in Our Time:
The New A rt o f Sewing
M uskegon, M ichigan
N ovem ber 13,2008 -
February 8,2009
V’V’W
'. muskegonartmuseum.org
W h a t’s in a stitch? T o some
artists, everything. For Tom
Lundberg, “ Stitch by stitch
the fluidity o f thread is trans-
form ed into som ething layered
and dense,” and there’s inspi-
ration in the “sym bolic intensity
o f badges and stitched em -
blems” and in “ the storytelling
traditions found in historic tex-
tiles.” Carol Shinn’s “ technique
o f machine stitching comes
from m y love o f draw ing” and
her stitches are “ like pencil
hatching.” For Ilze A v ik s, in
w orks like
Improved Roses
(de-
tail)© , 2008, “ the random
‘seed stitch ’ is repeated thou-
sands o f times and is the em-
bodim ent o f perseverance.
..
T h e active gesture o f paint on
cloth is allowed to insinuate
itse lf from beneath the stitch -
es.” A nna Torm a is influenced
030 american craft feb/maro9
