For the fifty years of its existence, the Archie Bray Foundation has been a continuous, unique, and important center for the arts. Archie Bray envisioned his pottery as a place where young artists could use the brickyard's clays and kilns, hone their skills, learn from each other, and develop a sensibility about the Foundation's signature production ware. In 1951, Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio became the Bray's first two resident artists. By the start of the 1960s, they had accomplished a revolution in the concept of ceramic art. A series of resident directors, themselves artists, have overseen the development and expansion of the Bray Foundation's programs and workshops. An ever-increasing number of young artists continue to find support and inspiration there, largely because of the three rugged individualists who gave it life and impetus. "It is a place," writes curator Peter Held, "where people come of age, finding a niche in the centuries-old continuum of the ceramic arts." 
"You get notorious when you start a pottery in the middle of the wilderness," Peter Meloy reflected, looking back on his own backyard pottery beginnings in Helena, Montana, in the late 1940s. Meloy went on to a career in law but remained actively connected with the arts, as did Branson Stevenson of Great Falls, a versatile artist and businessman. They became two of the three original board members of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. The other member and founder, Archie Bray, owned a brickyard that, even if at first notorious in its western isolation, became the nexus of contemporary ceramics in America. 
This fiftieth anniversary publication offers a history of the Archie Bray Foundation, an evaluation of its accomplishments, and a discussion of 85 works selected from more than 800 in the Bray collection. Through interviews with artists, resident directors, workshop presenters, and the late Peter Meloy, and drawing on the resources of the Foundation's archives, Rick Newby and Chere Jiusto present its always lively, occasionally conflicted, and unfailingly interesting history through the voices and letters of those who knew it best. Art historian Patricia Failing considers the aesthetic and intellectual influences of the Bray experience upon artists who worked there, and on their later work. She examines the profound effects that a seminal workshop of 1952, presented by legendary potters Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, and Soetsu Yanagi, had upon the Bray's resident potters, and subsequently on the entire concept of ceramic art in America. Art critic and writer Janet Koplos discusses the unique circumstances that gave rise to the Bray collection and gives a close reading of the 85 objects selected for the book. A Ceramic Continuum also includes a listing of all Archie Bray Foundation resident directors and artists and of workshop presenters over the years.

A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence

Arts & Photography

Failing, Patricia

Jiusto, Chere

Newby, Rick

Koplos, Janet

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Univ of Washington Pr

Over the past 40 years, Mary Lee Hu has affirmed her distinctive voice in the world of jewelry with her elegant, voluptuous creations. Using wire the way hand weavers use threads, Hu has blazed a trail as both artist and innovator, exploring the nexus between metalsmithing and textile techniques, often through the recovery of historical precedents from an ancient past, and inspired by her innate aspiration to perfection and her stubborn curiosity. Hu's apparently effortless and graceful creations, resulting from twining, weaving, knotting, and braiding, investigate both the possibilities and limits of wire by melding fiber art and jewelry, structure and pattern, light and line. 
Knitted, Knotted, Twisted, and Twined features exquisite earrings, rings, brooches, and neckpieces drawn from public and private collections internationally. The book traces the evolution and refinement of Hu's processes and skill from her earliest experimental pieces in the late 1960s--capturing the spirit of a time when craft and lifestyle were so passionately intertwined--to the confidence and movement of her contemporary creations. 
Mary Lee Hu taught metalsmithing at the University of Washington until her retirement in 2006.

Knitted, Knotted, Twisted, and Twined: The Jewelry of Mary Lee Hu

Falino, Jeannine

Catalani, Stefano

History & Criticism

Bellevue Art Museum

Why are people still handmaking utilitarian pottery in the 21st century? Doesn’t industrial production take care of all our storage and cooking and serving needs? Yet, in all corners of the US, pottery is being discovered, studied, developed, produced, sold, collected, used, displayed, preserved, and passed down. Answers to these questions are vividly realized in the words of potters themselves—funny, philosophical, intense, and inspiring life narratives captured by Janet Koplos, an award-winning art critic who has followed American studio ceramics for the last four decades. The depth and breadth of this book are unprecedented in American craft history. Fifty individuals or pairs of potters offer their experiences, their thoughts, and their lessons learned. When art is at home in the kitchen, dining room, or living room, as is the case with functional pottery, the impact on our lives can be profound.

What Makes a Potter: Functional Pottery in America Today

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Schiffer Craft

Here is the first comprehensive survey of modern craft in the United States. Makers follows the development of studio craft--objects in fiber, clay, glass, wood, and metal--from its roots in nineteenth-century reform movements to the rich diversity of expression at the end of the twentieth century. More than four hundred illustrations complement this chronological exploration of the American craft tradition. Keeping as their main focus the objects and the makers, Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf offer a detailed analysis of seminal works and discussions of education, institutional support, and the philosophical underpinnings of craft. In a vivid and accessible narrative, they highlight the value of physical skill, examine craft as a force for moral reform, and consider the role of craft as an aesthetic alternative. Exploring craft's relationship to fine arts and design, Koplos and Metcalf foster a critical understanding of the field and help explain craft's place in contemporary culture. Makers will be an indispensable volume for craftspeople, curators, collectors, critics, historians, students, and anyone who is interested in American craft.

Makers: A History of American Studio Craft

Metcalf, Bruce

The University of North Carolina Press

Throughout the 20th century, prominent artists from Pablo Picasso to A. R. Penck have experimented with ceramics. The works they produced have complemented and often expanded upon their styles and techniques in painting and sculpture, but they have rarely been studied by art historians. Here for the first time are ceramic works by 23 European artists, all from the extensive collection of artists' pottery at the Museum Het Kruithuis in the Netherlands -- the only such collection in the world.
Ceramics by Miro, Leger, Chagall, Braque, Dufy, and Cocteau are beautifully illustrated and discussed, as is the work of Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, and other members of the mid-century CoBrA movement, and that of contemporary artists such as Mimmo Paladino and Bruce McLean. Essays set the ceramics in context, and documentary photographs show the artists at work.

The Unexpected: Artists' Ceramics of the 20th Century

Harry N. Abrams

For the past 25 years, Irvin Tepper has been engaged in an exploration of the physical and conceptual idea of the coffee cup. Endowed with animistic qualities, Tepper's cups (made of porcelain or bronze, seen in photographs and drawings) hear, think, and even speak, commenting on the stories they overhear and the lives they witness as we drink our daily cups of coffee--with friends, business associates, or just the daily paper.

Irvin Tepper: When Cups Speak: Life with the Cup-A 25 Year Survey

Ross, David

Feldman, Edmund Burke

Harithas, James

Freidus, Marc

Su rez-Cobi n, Armando

Milnes, Robert

San Jose State University

An overview of contemporary Japanese sculpture discusses such cultural influences as spirituality, architecture, garden design, and the tea ceremony, and surveys the work of ninety sculptors

Contemporary Japanese Sculpture (Abbeville Modern Art Movements)

Sculpture

Abbeville Pr

A book on the elements of recent Japanese sculptures with color and black-and-white photographs of the sculptures. Each image comes with the name of the artist, their birth date, the title of the sculpture, the year it was made, the materials it is made of, and its dimensions.

Contemporary Japanese Sculpture

Abbeville Press

One of the world's leading ceramists, Betty Woodman bridges the gap between art and craft, and continues to expand the boundaries of her discipline. Published in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, this beautifully illustrated book shows how she became a pioneer in exploring the limits of her media and how she came to the dramatic use of shape and color for which she is renowned today. Woodman's art is characterized by contradictions. It refers to the ancient and yet it is striking in its freshness; it is delicate and robust, decorative and functional, sculptural and painterly, familiar and surprising. Woodman has expanded the potential for working in ceramics by creating everything from simple and traditional vessels to large-scale ceramic and paint wall murals and installation pieces. With essays by three leading art critics that consider her history, influences, and evolution as an artist, as well as the impact that she has had on the art world, this volume is the definitive work on Woodman's career.

Betty Woodman

DANTO, Arthur C.

Woodman, Betty

The Monacelli Press

Though Dutch artist Teun Hocks--performer, photographer, painter--is widely known and shown around the world, this will be his first English-language book. In it, Hocks plays his signature role, which Janet Koplos describes as "an innocent Everyman in an always strange and often funny world", in scenes that range from burlesque to tragicomic. His lonely Buster Keaton-like persona perseveres through odd and unforgiving environments, struggling to find stable ground in an unstable, even absurd, universe. Life's complications and challenges take the form of impossible Rube Goldbergian contraptions fraught with psychological implications. Each engaging image captures one moment of an implied narrative, triggering questions about how the protagonist ever got himself into such a fix and what in the world will happen next. Hocks begins by sketching out various one-man narratives, and then poses himself in a carefully plotted setup against his own painted backdrop. After photographing the scene, he paints in oil on top of the resulting oversize gelatin silver print. In addition to his painted photographs,Teun Hocks includes drawings, Polaroids and studio shots that illuminate the artist's creative process. The wit, elaborate technique and rich colors of Hocks's images combine to form an irrepressibly original oeuvre.

Teun Hocks

Individual Artists

Aperture

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Books by Koplos, Janet