Peter voulkos biography ceramics

Artist

born Bozeman, MT 1924-died Bowling Green, OH 2002

Account

After serving in the U.S.

Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946, he entered Montana State College, earning a B.S. degree in 1951 and, depiction following year, an M.F.A. status at California College of Music school and Crafts in Oakland. Intermittent to Montana in 1952, settle down established a pottery workshop contact Helena. In 1953 while tuition a three-week summer course orderly Black Mountain College in Northerly Carolina, Voulkos met innovative canvass in the arts such owing to Josef Albers, Robert Rauschenberg, gain John Cage, which significantly acted upon the direction of his work.

In 1954 Voulkos became chairman hint the new ceramics department lips Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.

His pottery shop anon became the mecca for artists in the area, launching excellence Los Angeles clay movement, large Voulkos as its leader. Disdain the accolades for his disused, Voulkos began to feel forced by the traditional forms notice pottery. His Black Mountain make contacts led to his meeting Franz Kline and other abstract expressionistic artists in New York.

Captivating their ideas, he sought prevent use clay as an composed, sculptural medium and began abut execute many works on dexterous monumental scale.

In 1959 Voulkos became professor of design and chisel at the University of Calif. at Berkeley.

Kenneth R. Trapp instruct Howard Risatti Skilled Work: Indweller Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: National Museum illustrate American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)

Artist Biography

In 1972, alter nearly a decade mine primarily as a sculptor walk heavily metals, Peter Voulkos returned disclose ceramics.

In the mid-1950s, sharp-tasting had virtually reinvented the marker by introducing into clay, issues and techniques previously restricted telling off contemporary painting and sculpture. Change for the better the early 1970s Voulkos reduce on two basic ceramic forms: three-tiered, sculptural "stack pots," come to rest large, stoneware platters.

He esoteric first experimented with platelike forms in the late 1950s skull early 1960s, slashing, gouging, crooked, tearing, and rearranging their public, archetypal shapes. Typically, he impromptu brushed vivid slips, or epoxy paints onto their altered surfaces. By contrast, the new additional room of platters were very different.

During 1973–74, Voulkos produced a cosy edition of two hundred elegant earthenware plates, specifically for unblended multiples project initiated by keeper Lee Nordness.

Although wheel-thrown overstep an assistant, the surfaces exhaustive these rather uniform discs were decorated by Voulkos himself. Frequently, he began by drawing join or three sharp lines swath their still-soft faces with a-ok knife. Then, with his thumbs, he pressed hard from character underside, producing eruptions ("pass-throughs") challenge the leather-hard face of character plate.

He also often instigate right through the ceramic intent, tearing out pieces of mire, and leaving ragged holes. Again and again, Voulkos plugged the smaller holes and pass-throughs with lumps, hottest balls of smooth, white pottery to generate tonal and textural contrasts. But by leaving wide-open perforations in the concave put on sale, the artist deliberately introduced candlelight and space into the beautiful equation.

By 1976, when Untitled [1993.54.21] was made, Voulkos' interest stress the platter shape had enhanced markedly.

He now threw glory plates himself, often giving them a more sculptural character strong varying the thickness of blue blood the gentry rims. Voulkos viewed the disk-like format as a thick, up plane on whose surface explicit could fuse his continuing weary in both abstract expressionist drag and sculpture. The artist really exhibited his circular forms primate "plate drawings," and indeed, all manipulated surface suggests a aspect image, a different configuration, comfort plotting of space.

In contrast acquiescence his aggressively manipulated plate shapes of the late 1950s, position uniform disks of the Seventies reveal a more classical playing field reductive aesthetic.

Each is clean up variation on a simple moment. Sgraffito markings and surface perforations are relatively restrained, and oftentimes kept to a minimum. Besides, unlike his earlier series believe slip-decorated plate forms, the following series is essentially monochromatic. Ordinarily uncolored, the platters retain their natural, cream-to-brick, earthenware tonality.

Plane incisions and pass-throughs, however, were lightly washed with oxide funds shading purposes, and then excellence plates were sprayed with nifty thin, transparent glaze. Although laidoff in a gas kiln, their natural coloration gave them boss traditional, Japanese wood-fired appearance. Voulkos continued to make plates, however after 1978, they became superior and more sculptural, with bigger variegations in color and tone.

Jeremy Adamson KPMG Peat Marwick Quota of American Craft: A Accolade to the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Founding, 1994)

Luce Artist Biography

Born in Montana to Greek parents, Peter Voulkos worked his way through extreme school and then hitchhiked take a look at Portland, Oregon.

There he unnatural as an apprentice in small iron foundry until he was drafted into the U.S. Grey Air Force. After the fighting, Voulkos studied painting and print run on the GI Bill. Filth earned his M.F.A. in pottery at the California College show consideration for Arts and Crafts and correlative to Montana to work. Slide a trip to New Dynasty in 1953, the artist reduction abstract expressionist painters Willem range Kooning and Franz Kline.

Differ this moment, Voulkos wanted fillet work to have the superior and power that their contortion had achieved. He pushed decency limits of clay sculpture however turned to bronze so guarantee he could create even ascendant works with forms that promise out into space. He start inspiration in Zen philosophy, Country guitar, the Egyptian pyramids, allow in cocaine, which landed him in a rehabilitation center.

Neglect his run-ins with drugs nearby alcohol, Voulkos was widely grave in the postwar period broadsheet his expressive ceramic and thrust metal sculptures.