Sunday, November, 9, 2003
Showcasing feats of clay
Several O.C. art venues get fired up over works of ceramic art.
By RICHARD CHANG
The Orange County Register


It's the stuff that kids play with, hobbyists mold during evening extension classes and potters use to make vessels and earthenware.

It's clay, and it appears to be making a resurgence lately among area art institutions. The Laguna Art Museum has mounted two clay exhibitions, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art is featuring a Chinese ceramics show, and the Grand Central Art Center is showcasing the continuation of one of Laguna's exhibits.

Clay has been around for eons - it's literally as old as the Earth. Primitive man used clay to make pots and draw pictures inside caves.

Clay - in the fired form of vases, bowls and platters - was treasured in ancient China and Greece.
But in the modern context, ceramics has often not been considered on the same level as other "fine" arts, such as painting and sculpture from marble or bronze.

Rather, clay has long been cast in the less prestigious categories of craft or design. Perhaps the medium's ubiquity - from the kitchen to the gardening aisle at your neighborhood retail store - has something to do with it.

"There's a hierarchy in the art world, with painting at the top," said Barbara Thompson, ceramic sculptor and organizer of "Chinese Ceramics Today: Between Tradition and Contemporary Expression" at OCCCA. "It's an artificial hierarchy, but one we've had to live with."

Influential institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York have not exhibited ceramics nor built up substantial clay collections, further reinforcing presumptions of aesthetic rank.

"That's always been part of the hurdle that's always been there," said Tyler Stallings, curator of exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum.

But things have been progressively changing, both here and abroad.

Starting in the United States during the 1950s, artist and teacher Peter Voulkos led a group of energetic, experimental ceramists at Otis Art Institute, then known as the Los Angeles County Art Institute.

His work, and that of his students and colleagues, are featured in the exhibit, "Rebels in Clay: Peter Voulkos and the Otis Group," at Laguna through Feb. 22.

Meeting regularly in Voulkos' basement, the group demonstrated tremendous creativity, defying the established tradition that ceramic forms had to serve a utilitarian function.

They pounded, punctured, twisted and tore their clay, creating irregular and colorful shapes that were more akin to Abstract Expressionism than to factory-formed pottery.

"It was a pioneering time," said Susan Peterson, Arizona-based ceramics scholar and author. "Everyone turned out very different. No one followed the other."

The Laguna exhibit includes work by key figures in the movement: Voulkos, Kenneth Price, John Mason, Henry Takemoto, Michael and Magdalena Frimkess and Jerry Rothman.

ONE OF O.C.'S OWN
A longtime Laguna Beach resident, Rothman is one of the most prolific of the Voulkos group. His work is the focus of an expansive retrospective at Laguna that runs through Feb. 29.

The Laguna museum showcases work from 1956 to 1997, while Santa Ana's Grand Central Art Center is exhibiting work from 1997 to the present, with a couple of 1960s pieces thrown in.

Rothman's sculptures are wildly eclectic, with earlier pieces paying tribute to traditional and Japanese forms and later creations breaking loose into freestyle and abstraction.

Many are elaborately painted, glazed and illustrated; others maintain an organic uniformity of hue and mood.

Mythical, sexual and artistic references abound. The Greek myth of Leda and the Swan is explored in a highly "interactive" series; various ritual vessels recall classical, Baroque and Modernist eras; and several pieces featuring the devil in violent conflict with man are reminiscent of Francisco de Goya's chilling painting "Saturn Devouring His Son."

"Clay has been the most versatile material that ever has been, and still is," Rothman said from Laguna Woods, where he now resides. "People have too much relation with it as a utilitarian material. They have difficulty thinking of it in other ways."

Some of Rothman's 1990s work is explicitly political, with dunces donning star-speckled, blue cone hats and red, white and blue attire. They're balancing government buildings, spilling oil barrels or getting crushed by a winged staff and serpents, symbol of the medical profession.

"Art has been political for centuries," Rothman said. "The Sistine Chapel was a great PR job. The use of art for social and political purposes has been around forever."

The artist, who turns 70 this week, will conduct a gallery talk at Laguna Art Museum at 11 a.m. Nov. 16. After the lecture, the museum will serve cake to celebrate his birthday.

A NEW LOOK FROM CHINA
American daring and experimentation in clay has been catching on abroad, particularly in China, where a new generation of ceramic artists is breaking from centuries of esteemed, if confining, tradition.

They, too, are venturing beyond the boundaries of pristine porcelain pots and vases and are using clay as an innovative sculptural medium.

With help from a National Endowment for the Arts grant, OCCCA member Thompson has brought a touring exhibition of 23 Chinese artists' work to Santa Ana through Dec. 14. The next stop is Hawaii, then the show returns to China.

About 80 percent of the artists are under 40, and a youthful exuberance seems to emanate from the work.

Bai Ming, who has become something of a celebrity in his home country, bends porcelain into a series of curved, contemplative shapes, each a textured meditation leading to the next.

Zhou Dingfang finely sculpts her earthenware into teapots that look like wood, string, peanuts and mushrooms. Her "Dancing Tea Pots" show the elasticity and flexibility of the material.

"Clay has a physicality that painting can't do," said Thompson, who was a student of Rothman's at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught for more than 20 years. "Painting is like a window. Sculpture is like a person. Like clay, we are silica. Silica and water."

Some of the artists, like Chris Lo and Hsu I-Chi, offer their own takes on the traditional forms of vase and bowl. Others demonstrate clay's uncanny ability to mimic other media.

Li Bei takes thin, curled swaths of stoneware and transfers emulsified images onto them, creating the appearance of photography and film.

Zhou Wu takes large chunks of porcelain and adds glaze in certain places to emulate the effect of snow melting on rock.

The OCCCA, Laguna and Grand Central exhibits all demonstrate that clay is not just for kids and potters. It's a serious medium that's malleable enough to reflect a sense of humor, convey high artistic expressions and defy expectations.