Peter Voulkos and John Mason
October 12 - November 11, 2000
In 1954, Peter Voulkos came to Los Angeles where he started a ceramics department at the Otis Art Institute and quickly gained recognition for his charismatic manner and super-adept handling of clay. John Mason, a painting student from the Chouinard Art Institute, dropped in on the evening ceramic demonstrations at Otis upon hearing rumors of the Voulkos phenomenon.
These two artists from different parts of the American west (Voulkos from Montana, Mason from Nevada) converged on this small arts college campus. What followed was nothing short of a revolution in clay and the development of an entirely new genre of ceramic art. The differences in their places of origin are almost analogous to the differences in their works. Mason the quiet, contemplative art student from the Nevada desert was by far the more subtle and introspective of the two artists. Voulkos a macho, first-generation, Greek-American wore his volatile and emotive personality on his sleeve as it were, both as an artist and an educator (though one might describe his role more as ringleader than educator).
Working in an aesthetic that was extrapolated from Abstract Expressionist painting, each artist found separate almost opposite ways of addressing their medium. From the mid-1950's on Voulkos exploited clay's innate capacity as a vessel-making medium, throwing plates and pots that he would then tear, cut, poke, rip and reassemble as sculpture. He commanded his medium and consciously challenged the established rules of its aesthetic limitations. Mason by contrast, produced clay sculpture primarily in an additive manner. He was tolerant and accepting of the clay's natural tendencies, which lend themselves to evoking images of geological phenomenon.
While neither artist had established their reputation as a colorist, each employed separate approaches to include elements of color (glazes and paint) in their works at various periods. Voulkos treated the surface as a medium on which he would draw, splash, layer, even stencil, consciously separating his colored imagery from the clay body. Images of human figures, animals, text, symbols and patterns adorn the surfaces of Voulkos' early abstract forms. For Mason, on the other hand, color was an organic component within the overall form. On the issue of Mason's early use of color Barbara Haskell once remarked, "color is not used as an embellishment but is felt as an integral part of the piece, the extremely simple shapes seeming actually to contain their given color."
From 1957-58 Voulkos and Mason shared studio space in Los Angeles. Before long, a sheet went up to divide the space as each sensed the currents of influence were flowing a bit too strong. In 1958, Voulkos left Otis and resettled in Berkeley to head U.C. Berkeley's ceramic department. The aesthetic courses of these two artists continued to shift in a jockey-like manner as Mason's work became monolithic and massive in scale while Voulkos concentrated on the "stack" vessel and wheel-thrown plates. This show which includes thirteen works ranging in dates from 1954 to 1972, attempts only to reveal various aspects of the relationship these two artists had during this period.