Innovation and Change:
Great Ceramics from the Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University Art Museum Collection

September 8 – November 4, 2007

Click here for FWMoA Podcast for this exhibition

Innovation and Change: Great Ceramics from the Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University Art Museum Collection highlights 79 masterworks by many of the leading international artists of our time, offering a panoramic survey of the potential of clay as an expressive art form. The objects on view range from functional ware for everyday use to more expressive sculptural forms. The exhibition features works by such prominent artists as Robert Arneson, Rudy Autio, Hans Coper, Rick Dillingham, Ken Ferguson, Shoji Hamada, Karen Karnes, Bernard Leach, Michael Lucero, Maria Martinez, Otto and Gertrude Natzler, Lucie Rie, Edwin Scheier, Toshiko Takaezu, Akio Takamori, Peter Voulkos, and Betty Woodman, to name just a few.

Some of the artists started their careers when the studio movement in America was in its infancy. After World War II, there was renewed interest in the craft movement, with many universities establishing programs and more museums presenting their work. Influenced by European modernist design, as well as Asian pottery traditions, emerging ceramic pioneers created a new American aesthetic.

During the 1960s, the craft field matured and prospered. Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada were influential figures in the field, proclaiming the value of functional pottery in everyday life. But an American revolution in clay began under the charismatic leadership of Peter Voulkos, who embraced and redefined the potential of clay as an innovative form of contemporary art, which embraced individual expression rather than following the crowd. Rules were broken and a new ceramic frontier was born.
The figure became a prominent foil for artistic expression in clay and witnessed a resurgence of interest in the 1960s, primarily from West Coast artists, including Robert Arneson and Viola Frey. During the 1970s and 1980s, another sea of change took place. Many artists began using the vessel format to express painterly concerns or to convey personal stories, either as painted narration on the surface or as fully integrated form and design. With each successive generation, emerging artists have forged a new voice within the ceramic idiom. Borrowing freely from different time epochs and cultures, as well as being more fluid between art mediums, they are not limited by past traditions.
The showing here in Fort Wayne will begin a ten city national tour over a three year period containing 79 vessels and sculptures of ceramics from the collection of the Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University Art Museum. The exhibition was curated by Peter Held, Curator of Ceramics and was developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Missouri.