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Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004) was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the youngest of three siblings. Intrigued by his brother’s interest in art, Donaldson began drawing cartoons and comic books when he was just three years old. As a teenager, Donaldson moved to Chicago where he took art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. He eventually returned to Arkansas to attend AM&N College, where he studied art with John Miller Howard, a painter trained by Harlem Renaissance artist Hale Woodruff in the Social Realist style. Read More

Born into a wheat-farming family in La Crosse, Washington, Betty Whiteman Feves (1918-1985) became a prominent West Coast ceramist in the mid-twentieth century. In the late 1930s, she completed her undergraduate degree in art at Washington State College (now University), where she studied with up-and-coming Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still. In the early 1940s, Feves attended the Art Students League in New York City and completed her master’s degree in Art Education at Columbia University. These few years spent in New York allowed Feves to experiment with clay structures and abstraction. Read More

George Ohr (1857-1918) described himself boldly and provocatively: “Unequaled. Unrivaled. Undisputed. The Greatest Art Potter on Earth.” While “the Greatest Art Potter on Earth” never received the traction that Ohr desired, he was known by another title that lasted well past his death: “the Mad Potter of Biloxi.” Read More

Mary Chase Perry Stratton (1867-1961) was born in Hancock, Michigan. Her family moved to Ann Arbor in 1877 after her father’s tragic death, and relocated to Detroit a few years later. She attended art classes at the Detroit Museum of Art’s art school as a teenager and continued her studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio from 1887 to 1889. Initially interested in sculpture, Stratton quickly turned her talents to china painting, a popular pastime—and livelihood—for women in the United States in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Read More

Harrison McIntosh (1914-2016) was born in Vallejo, California, and became enamored with the arts at a young age. He developed a love of painting when his brother Robert was accepted to the Art Center College of Design in 1937. The McIntosh family relocated from Vallejo to Los Angeles to allow Robert to pursue a painting career, and this change of location was integral to McIntosh’s artistic growth, as he discovered his passion for ceramics in LA. The family hired architect Richard Neutra to construct their new home, and young McIntosh jumped at the opportunity to assist Neutra in the design. He suggested that the family add a garage to the layout, and this space later became his pottery studio. In 1939, McIntosh visited the San Francisco World’s Fair, where he saw Japanese ceramics as well as the folk art pavilion. This experience, and his interaction with Los Angeles ceramists, solidified McIntosh’s interest in the field. Read More