Untitled, 1958 28 1/2 in. x 21 in. x 7 1/2 in. (72.39 cm x 53.34 cm x 19.05 cm) The Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection: Purchased with an anonymous gift, 1992. 92.80
Peter Voulkos
A man of enormous energy, Voulkos is regarded as the potter who helped change the direction of contemporary American ceramics in the late 1950s. Voulkos freed clay from its traditional, historical and technical limitations by expanding the aesthetic possibilities to include gesture and sculpturally expressive forms. The artist's influences at the time included the history of European and Oriental ceramics, jazz and Abstract Expressionist painting.
Cruciform Vase, completed in 1958 when Voulkos was teaching at the Los Angeles County Art Institute, exemplifies an early step in a new direction. While the work is open at the top and has a vessel reference, the artist's intent was clearly sculptural. His forms were vigorously thrown, cut, altered and stacked. To this central core he added cross-arms and glaze. The asymmetrical form, the firing cracks and the gestural strokes of the glaze serve to disrupt the viewer's concept of vessel and to reinforce the feeling of improvisation and spontaneity in the creative process. Like a sketch in clay, this work is analogous to action painting in the round.
Peter Voulkos was born in Bozeman, Montana in 1924. He received his B.S. at Montana State University in 1951 and his M.F.A. at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1952. He has taught at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana; Black Mountain College near Ashville, North Carolina, Los Angeles County Art Institute (Otis Art Institute), Los Angeles, California and the University of California, Berkeley and has had an enormous influence on several generations of artists working in clay. He currently resides in Oakland, California.
  
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