Earth, Wind, and Fire

When Objects Become Sculptures

By Wendy Cromwell

I’ll never forget mushing my hands into a lump of clay that my art teacher plopped in front of me in fourth grade. Everybody received the same lump, but what we all did with it was wildly different. The kid in all of us comes out when we play with clay, and that’s part of its enormous appeal.

Today, a new generation of artists is pushing the boundaries of art-making through ceramics. Inspired by practitioners such as Betty Woodman, a bonafide “trail-glazer” who recently passed away at the age of 88, artists are experimenting with unpredictable kiln effects and challenging the status quo by elevating ceramic to the loftier realm of sculpture.

For many would-be collectors, Contemporary art can be mystifying and expensive. Ceramics offer an easier point of access, both visually and economically.

The medium is literal in form, organic in makeup: the simple combination of earth and water baked at very high temperatures yields straightforward results. There’s comfort in the tactility of ceramics and delight in beautiful glazes. Asian porcelain (a type of ceramic) has long been collected, validating the viability of a lasting market for ceramics.

For artists, ceramics offer an approachable entry into the world of making, unlike painting and sculpture, both of which are steeped in history and weighty biases. The practice of ceramics provides a communal maker space for artists to work alongside artisans.

Universally, ceramics engender a comfort factor that Danes call hygge: surrounding ourselves with warm materials and tactile objects to create a cozy sense of well-being

Circa 3,500 B.C., before the invention of paper, scribes relied on clay tablets to write. These tablets were a mix of water and earth left to bake in the hot sun and could be “wiped clean” by rehydrating in water. When burned by fire, they remained fixed forever.

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Sumerians and Egyptians were experts at firing and glazing clay, which they used for architecture (tiles and bricks), decorative purposes (beaded jewelry), and funerary objects

Greeks and Romans used ceramic to store grains and wine, but also as ceremonial, painted trophies. By around 1,500 B.C., China was producing porcelain, a highly refined type of ceramic, which later made its way into Europe over the Silk Road.

Persians also used refined glazes, creating exquisite tiles that covered mosque interiors.

Through a cross-pollination of cultures in medieval Spain, clay innovations traveled into Portugal and Italy. By the early Renaissance, Florence was the center of ceramic production in Europe, where exquisitely formed and glazed dishes and bowls were all the rage.

Ceramics were also used to make sculptural reliefs that were embedded into the facades of buildings and church interiors.

In the early 20th century, pioneering Modern artists like Picasso and Matisse came to the South of France to escape chaotic city life.

Vallauris, a Riviera town, had a tradition of ceramics dating to Roman times -- its earth is particularly well suited to firing at high temperatures.

Picasso, reacting against the pressures of painting, found simplicity by the sea and also ceramics! From the late 1940s on, Picasso made hundreds of sculptures in Vallauris’ famous ceramics studio. His charming and creative ceramics found their way into the homes of both Picasso collectors and those who could never afford the paintings, remaining at accessible price points to this day.

Broadly speaking, San Francisco is the city most associated with ceramics. In the 1890s, the Californian Arts & Crafts architecture and design movement took hold as a reaction against Industrialism. In 1906, a fire destroyed San Francisco, galvanizing Arts & Crafts artisans and artists to rebuild, so crafts proliferated. Studios and schools to train artists that were established in Northern California are still going strong today.

Perhaps no artist has been as influential in the field of American ceramics as Peter Voulkos (1924 - 2002). In the 1950s, Voulkos applied the principles of Abstract Expressionist painting to ceramics. He made sculptures with ceramic, not lamp bases or pitchers, removing the function from form. This small difference created a huge leap forward in the possibilities for the medium, which could be thrown on a wheel, OR flattened and cut into strips -- to endless effect.

Voulkos ran the ceramics departments at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the Archie Bray Foundation, the oldest ceramics residency in the United States. Viola Frey was equally influential as Chair of Ceramics at the California College of Arts and Crafts for three decades.

Ceramics by Kathy Butterly, Out of one, many / Headscapes, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Sept 3, 2021 thru Feb.27, 2022. Photo by Dusty Kessler.

Recent exhibitions reflect increased interest and awareness of ceramics:

• Sterling Ruby: Ceramics at the Museum of Art and Design, New York 2019

• Making Knowing: Craft in Art 1950-2019, at the Whitney Museum, New York 2019-2020

• Clay Pop, at Deitch Projects, New York, a sold-out survey show, fall 2021

• The Flames: The Age of Ceramics, at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (ceramics from 3,500 BC to present)

Ceramics may be trending now, but they’ve been around for millennia!

Prior to founding Cromwell Art 18 years ago, Wendy Cromwell was Vice President of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art for nearly a decade. She ran a Fortune 500 corporate art collection before that, and consulted for several blue-chip art galleries while in graduate school. Wendy received her Master of Arts in Modern Art from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and graduated from Smith College with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. Wendy is past president and current board member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors and a member of the Appraisers Association of America. For tasty bites of art world knowledge delivered to your inbox monthly, subscribe to the Cromwell Art Snack.