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23-589: Peter Voulkos was one of the movement's driving forces. He established the Ceramic Center at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now the Otis College of Art and Design ), where he created massive, abstract ceramic sculptures. He felt that his free-form ceramic works were like jazz compositions: improvisational and free spirited. Voulkos began creating ever larger ceramic works to break away from

46-539: A bachelor's degree prior to admission, but many institutions do not require that the candidate's undergraduate major conform with their proposed path of study in the MFA program. Admissions requirements often consist of a sample portfolio of artworks or a performance audition . The Master of Fine Arts differs from the Master of Arts in that the MFA, while still an academic program, centers-on professional artistic practice in

69-678: A molder's apprentice at a ship's foundry in Portland. In 1943, Peter Voulkos was drafted into the United States Army during the Second World War, serving as an airplane gunner in the Pacific. Voulkos studied painting and printmaking at Montana State College, in Bozeman (now Montana State University ), where he was introduced to ceramics ( Frances Senska , who established the ceramics arts program,

92-718: A pottery business with classmate Rudy Autio , producing functional dinnerware. In 1951 Voulkos and Autio became the first resident artists at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts , in Helena, Montana . It is from his time as Resident Director (1951-1954) that the lineage of his mature work, later in full bloom during his tenure at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, can be traced. In 1953, Voulkos

115-511: A reviewer in Time said "Peter Voulkos' rough, ragged monuments are powerful weapons against the slick coffee-table pottery that often passes for modern art, and already a generation of fierce West Coast individualists has joined him at the barricades." Voulkos profoundly influenced John Mason , Kenneth Price and Paul Soldner . Voulkos turned the Los Angeles County Art Institute into an important center for ceramic art between 1954 and 1959. Moving to

138-538: A school in the University of Edinburgh . There he met the artists Dave Cohen, Sheldon Kaganof and Dion Myers, who introduced the ideas of the California Clay Movement to Britain. For many years his work reflected their influence. Citations Sources Peter Voulkos Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos ; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He

161-624: A student of Peter Voulkos, and adopted the abstract expressionist style of sculpture taught by Voulkos. In 2014, Frimkess received the Career Achievement Award from the Hammer Museum . Voulkos had huge influence, not just on potters and sculptors but even on painters. Awareness of the movement quickly spread. In 1959 the Guyanese artist Donald Locke obtained a grant to study for a master's degree in fine arts at Edinburgh College of Art ,

184-468: Is a graduate degree that typically requires two to three years of postgraduate study after a bachelor's degree , though the term of study varies by country or university. Coursework is primarily of an applied or performing nature, with the program often culminating in a thesis exhibition or performance . The first university to admit students to the degree of Master of Fine Arts was the University of Iowa in 1940. A candidate for an MFA typically holds

207-445: Is also memorable for the live ceramics-sculpting sessions he would lead in front of his students, demonstrating his intense and even unforgiving manner of working with the material, while simultaneously showcasing his refined mastery of the nuances of the craft. His creativity quest sometimes led to the use of commercial dough-mixing machines to mix the clay, and the development of a prototype for an electric potter's wheel. In 1979 he

230-483: Is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art . He established the ceramics department at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and at UC Berkeley. Peter Voulkos was born the third of five children to Greek immigrant parents, Aristovoulos I. Voulkopoulos, anglicized and shortened to Harry (Aris) John Voulkos and Effrosyni (Efrosine) Peter Voulalas. After high school, he worked as

253-546: The University of California, Berkeley , in 1959, where he also founded the ceramics program, which grew into the Department of Design. In the early 1960s, he set up a bronze foundry off-campus, anticipating the metal cast Wurster Hall , and started exhibiting his work at NY's Museum of Modern Art . He became a full professor there in 1967, and continued to teach until 1985. Among his students were many ceramic artists who became well known in their own right. In 1984, Voulkos

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276-480: The anagama kiln of Peter Callas, who had helped to introduce Japanese wood-firing aesthetics in the United States. Peter Voulkos is also among those who raised ceramics to the non-utilitarian, aesthetic sphere. While setting up the ceramics department at UC Berkeley, his students were authorized to make a teapot, "only if it didn't work". Voulkos started this new trend while in Los Angeles in the 1950s, saying, "there

299-511: The University of California in Berkeley he and sculptors such as Sidney Gordon and Harold Paris developed an influential school of sculpture. His pupils included Kenneth Price , Billy Al Bengston , Robert Arneson , Nancy Selvin and Stan Bitters . The work of Voulkos, Arneson and others typified Californian art in the 1950s and 1960s, and was featured in many exhibitions. Stephen De Staebler

322-550: The art ceramics department at the Otis College of Art and Design , called the Los Angeles County Art Institute, his work rapidly became abstract and sculptural. In 1959, he presented for the first time his heavy ceramics during the exhibition at the Landau Gallery in Los Angeles. This created a seismic reaction in the ceramics world, both for the grotesquerie of the sculptures' shapes and the genius marriage of arts and craft, and accelerated his transfer to UC Berkeley. He moved to

345-424: The conventional arts and crafts of his day. Some of his work, named "plates", "ice buckets" or "tea bowls", were "deconstructed" traditional forms of glazed pottery. Others, such as his "stacks", were non-utilitarian and purely sculptural. During a career that lasted almost half a century, Voulkos made over 200 "stacks", some as much as 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) in height. Writing about the clay movement in 1963,

368-418: The early 1980s, Peter Voulkos went to rehab to deal with alcohol and cocaine addiction. Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts ( MFA or M.F.A. ) is a terminal degree in fine arts , including visual arts , creative writing , graphic design , photography , filmmaking , dance , theatre , other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts administration . It

391-478: The particular field, whereas programs leading to the MA usually center on the scholarly, academic, or critical study of the field. Additionally, in the United States, an MFA is typically recognized as a terminal degree for practitioners of visual art, design, dance, photography, theatre, film/video, new media, and creative writing—meaning that it is considered the highest degree in its field, qualifying an individual to become

414-513: Was a certain energy around L.A. at the time". He is most commonly identified as an Abstract Expressionist ceramist. Voulkos's sculptures are known for their visual weight, their freely-formed construction, and their aggressive and energetic decoration. During shaping, he would vigorously tear, pound, and gouge their surfaces. At some points in his career, he cast sculptures in bronze; and in early periods his ceramic works were glazed or painted and/or finished with painted brushstrokes. Peter Voulkos

437-511: Was another influential sculptor working mostly in clay and bronze who has been associated with the California Clay movement. A reviewer said of him that "He practically invented his own art form by beating and buckling tons of clay into awesome mountainous landscapes, but his human sculptures are also very moving." Michael Frimkess is another master of the California clay movement. Frimkess was

460-449: Was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts. At a New York auction in 2001, a 1986 sculpture by Peter Voulkos was sold $ 72,625 to a European museum. He died of a heart attack on February 16, 2002, after conducting a college ceramics workshop at Bowling Green State University , Ohio , demonstrating his skill to a live audience. While his early work was fired in electric and gas kilns, later in his career he primarily fired in

483-517: Was his teacher). Ceramics quickly became a passion. His 25 pounds of clay allowed by semester by the school was not enough, so he managed to spot a source of quality clay from the tires of the trucks that would stop by the restaurant where he worked part-time. He earned his MFA in ceramics from California College of the Arts and Crafts , in Oakland. Afterwards, he returned to Bozeman, and began his career in

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506-538: Was introduced to the use of wood firing in anagama kilns by Peter Callas, who became a close collaborator of his for the next 23 years. Most of Voulkos's later work was wood-fired in Callas's anagama , which was located at first in Piermont, New York . Voulkos is survived by his first wife, Margaret Cone, and their daughter, Pier, a polymer clay artist; his wife, Ann, and their son, Aris; and his brother and two sisters. In

529-529: Was invited to teach a summer session ceramics course at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina . After the summer at Black Mountain, he changed his approach to creating ceramics. The artist eschewed his traditional training and instead of creating smooth, well-thrown glazed vessels he started to work gesturally with raw clay, frequently marring his work with gashes and punctures. In 1954, after founding

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