Ceramics from the Everson Museum collection featured in Pepe Mar’s site-specific installation Clay Garden
Rudy Autio, American (1926-2007)
Double Lady Vessel, 1964
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Museum purchase, 25th Ceramic National, 1968, 68.63
Carleton Ball, American (1911-1992)
Vase, ca. 1966
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Williams, 24th Ceramic National, 1966, 66.64
Mary Frank, American (b. England, 1933)
Double Sundial, 1975-82
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art, Gift of Marvin Schwartz
Viola Frey, American (1933-2004)
Untitled Plate, 1976
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Museum purchase with the Robert and Dorothy Riester Ceramic Fund, 86.63
Throughout her career, Viola Frey challenged the typically held notions of ceramic as craft by mixing traditional techniques with modern designs and concepts. Frey’s earliest plates, begun in the 1970s, served as a three-dimensional sketchbook for the artist, on which she painted and constructed scenes composed of her own smaller sculptures alongside knick-knacks purchased at flea markets. Later plates began to include a cartoon-like spiral, turning the compositions into a vortex of spinning objects and themes. This plate includes two motifs found in many of Frey’s works: hands and the silhouette of a man wearing a hat. The hands serve as a type of self-portrait, reminding the viewer of Frey’s personal touch on each artwork, and the man in silhouette is Frey’s friend and fellow ceramic artist Howard Kottler.
Pepe Mar studied for a time with Frey at the California College of Arts and Crafts in the late 1990s. Upon arrival at her studio, he became fascinated with the collection of molds she had created for her own work, and threw himself into working with clay.
Henry Gernhardt, American (b. 1933)
Landscape No. 1, 1969
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Purchase Prize, 26th Ceramic National, 1970, 63.140
David Gilhooly, American (1943-2013)
Boris Frogloff, 1972
Earthenware
Everson Museum of Art, Gift of Les Levine, 84.50.3
David Gilhooly, American (1943-2013)
Frog Hell, 1972
Earthenware
Everson Museum of Art, Gift of Les Levine, 84.50.1
David Gilhooly, American (1943-2013)
Osiris Cloning, 1973
Earthenware
Everson Museum of Art, Gift of Les Levine, 84.50.4
Claire Hanzakos, American
Knossos, ca. 1962
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Museum purchase, 22nd Ceramic National, 1962, 64.19
Jun Kaneko, American (b. Japan, 1942)
Sanbon Ashi No. 1, 1960-68
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Museum purchase, 25th Ceramic National, 1968, 68.83
In 1963, Jun Kaneko moved from Japan to California to pursue training as a painter, but quickly began experimenting with clay. Kaneko approached his early ceramic works as if they were paintings, using brushes to paint slips and glazes onto clay slabs. His work eventually grew in size, and in 1982 he began to develop his “dangos,” monumental ceramic sculptures ironically named after bite-sized Japanese dumplings. Since successfully finishing the first six dangos in 1983, Kaneko has made hundreds in various sizes, some as large as 13 feet tall. The dangos are always glazed with painted patterns, typically stripes, polka dots, or zigzags.
Jean-Pierre Larocque, Canadian (b. 1953)
Untitled (Head), 1996
Glazed stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of Maureen O’Reilly, 2022.17
Montreal-based artist Jean-Pierre Larocque is known for his figurative ceramic sculptures. As a graduate student at Alfred University in the late 1980s, Larocque began to veer away from raw abstract forms to explore the figure by quickly and intuitively building up masses of clay that he scraped, flattened, squeezed, tore, and pressed together. This experimental approach, combined with his use of modern construction techniques and highly tactile surfaces, gives Larocque’s sculptures the haunting appearance of long-lost archaeological artifacts.
Tom McCanna, American (b. 1956)
Gay Clay Teapots, 1994
Earthenware
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of Thomas Folk, 2000.3.1-2
David MacDonald, American (b. 1945)
Stoneware Vessel (Calabash Series), 1983
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of the Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman Foundation, 2009.11.6
Pepe Mar, (b. 1977)
Cabeza (bronzed II), 2022
Ceramic
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of David Castillo, 2023
In 2022, Pepe Mar spent the summer at Cerámica Suro, Mexico’s leading ceramic studio. Founded in the 1950s as a small family-run studio workshop that produced decorative objects and dinnerware, Cerámica Suro is now a destination for artists from all over the world to develop ceramic works. During his summer at Cerámica Suro, Mar created several works, including Cabeza (bronzed II), which has recently been acquired for the Everson’s collection.
Gertrude and Otto Natzler, American (b. Austria, 1908-1971 and 1908-2007)
Vase, 1958
Earthenware
Everson Museum of Art; Purchase prize given by Guy Cowan Memorial, 20th Ceramic International, 1958, 60.12
Rena Peleg, Israeli (b. 1940)
Ceramic Structure, 1982
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art, Museum purchase, 89.39
Daniel Rhodes, American (1911-1989)
Form, 1962
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Purchase Prize given by the Helen S. Everson Memorial Fund, 22nd Ceramic National, 1962, 62.34
Brian Rochefort, American (b. 1985)
Yellow Vessel, 2017
Ceramic and glaze
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of the artist, 2018.17
Toshiko Takaezu, American (1922-2011)
Untitled (with spots), not dated
Stoneware
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of the artist, 2006.12.1
Born in Hawaii to Japanese immigrant parents, Toshiko Takaezu’s works are a blend of her Eastern heritage and Western styles. Takaezu began by making traditional vessels, but in the 1950s, she began to explore non-functional sculptures, embracing the idea of ceramics as artwork meant to be seen instead of used. Ranging from small enough to fit in your hand to over six feet tall, her sculptures reflect the teachings of Zen Buddhism, the expressive gestures of Abstract Expressionism, and natural landscapes. Takaezu created several different forms, including vertical “closed forms,” that rise to a slight point topped with a small opening, an example of which is displayed here.
Arnie Zimmerman, American (1954-2021)
Untitled Vessel, 1982
Earthenware
Everson Museum of Art; Gift of Lucia Beadel, Edward Beadel Jr., and Lucia Whisenand in memory of Edward F. Beadel, 85.26.1
Arnie Zimmerman was a sculptor and ceramist best known for his enormous earthenware vessels and Portuguese-inspired ceramic tiles. His vessels reveal the influence of Romanesque architecture, which Zimmerman encountered while touring cathedrals in Italy. Struck by the cathedrals’ overwhelmingly massive size and elaborately carved surfaces, Zimmerman began to translate these qualities into his large-scale vessels in the 1980s. Over six feet tall and weighing over one thousand pounds, Zimmerman has reinterpreted a traditionally small, ornamental object as a colossal architectural element.