Peter Voulkos Ceramist Essay -- Essays Papers

pecker Voulkos CeramistThe exhibition of recent stoneware vessels by Peter Voulkos at Frank Lloyd Gallery featured the sort of work on which the workman established reputation in the 1950s. The work was greeted with stunned amazement. However straight it is too, but its amazement of a different order -- the kind that comes from being in the presence of effortless artistic mastery. These astonishing vessels are truly amaising. all ceramic artist knows that what goes into a kiln looks very different from what comes out, and although what comes out can be controlled to varying degrees, its never certain. Uncertainty feels actively courted in Voulkos vessels, and this embrace of circumstances gives them a surprisingly contradictory sense of ease. Critical to the emergence of a significant art scene in Los Angeles in the second half of the 1950s, the 75-year-old artist has lived in Northern California since 1959 and this was his only second solo show in an L.A gallery in 30 years.Th ese days, L.A. is recognized as a pith for the production of contemporary art. But in the 1950s, the scene was slim -- few galleries and fewer museums. Despite the obscurity, a handful of solitary and determined artists broke intellect here, stretching the inflexible definitions of what constitutes painting, sculpture and other media. Among these avant-gardists was Peter Voulkos. In 1954, Voulkos was hired as chairman of the fledgling ceramics department at the L.A. County Art Institute, now genus Otis College of Art and Design, and during the five years that followed, he led what came to be known as the Clay Revolution. Students like John Mason, Paul Soldner, Ken Price and billy club Al Bengston, all of whom went on to become respected artists, were among his foot soldiers in the battle to free clay from its handicraft associations. By the late 1950s, Voulkos had established an foreign reputation for his muscular fired-clay sculptures, which melded Zen attitudes toward chance w ith the emotional fervor of Abstract Expressionist painting. Some 20 works -- including five Stacks (4-foot-tall sculptures) as surface as giant slashed-and-gouged plates and works on paper -- recently went on view at the Frank Lloyd Gallery. This non single show is his first at a Los Angeles gallery in 13 years, although a survey of his work was seen at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (presently carries a different... ... office of Tishman Realty. Despite this two-decade foray into bronze, Voulkos remained committed to get-up-and-go the boundaries of possibility in ceramics. From 1979 to 1984, he concentrated on firing plates and then the vessel-shaped stacks in an anagama, a Japanese wood-burning kiln. Inspired by the Haniwa figures and Momoyama period ceramics of Japan, Voulkos permit the ash and soot from the firing process in the kiln decorate the irregular surface of the clay. There was a certain kind of casualness about almost of the Japanese ceramics that I liked. There c an be a big crack in the pot caused by the kiln, and the piece becomes a national treasure, he says. The 1980s brought about a serious personal challenge, however. By mid-decade, he was forced to confront his addiction to cocaine and enter a rehabilitation facility. In 1989, he returned to his ceramic sculpture with a sense of renewed purpose and a more incisive and controlled sense of composition. During the 90s, he has regained the confidence in the process. Although retired from UC Berkeley, Voulkos soothe thrives as a teacher, spending about four months of each year on the road doing seminars. BibliographyPeter Voulkos