Within Two Hands: The Eye of the Collector

From the Marer Collection of Contemporary Ceramics at Scripps College, more than 70 works from the mid-1950s highlight this pivotal period that gave the ceramic medium new freedom of expression.  Includes objects by Peter Voulkos, Ruth Duckworth, Shoji Hamada, Jun Kaneko, Bernard Leach, Kenneth Price, Otto Natzler, Beatrice Wood and many more

During the mid 1950s, the ceramics department at Otis Art Institute (then Los Angeles County Art Institute) was a place of artistic vitality and innovative energy. At Otis, Peter Voulkos led a “revolution in clay” by questioning the tradition that ceramic forms must be utilitarian and by creating instead nonfunctional, sculptural works that gave the medium a new freedom of expression.

The Marer Collection of Contemporary Ceramics is one of the largest and most remarkable additions to the Scripps College Permanent Collection.  The scope is immense and international: it includes over 1500 works by American, British, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese artists. However, the collection’s core is focused on West Coast ceramics, especially the work of the Otis group, who challenged the traditional direction of the field of ceramics.

This collection is also quite extraordinary as it came to the college through one donor, Fred Marer, who was not a man of wealth but a teacher of modest means.

He began collecting in the early 1940s, first acquiring a quiet little teapot by one of the leading ceramists in Southern California, Laura Andreson, which piqued his interest in clay and encouraged him to investigate further.

I have selected work for this exhibition that best reflects the range and vitality that exists in this extraordinary collection while keeping in mind the spirit and courage of the collector himself.

Kirk Delman

Photos courtesy of Adam Willis.

PHOTO GALLERY