The Exhibition Of Recent Stoneware Vessels By Peter Voulkos At Frank L

The exhibition of recent stoneware vessels by Peter Voulkos at Frank Lloyd Gallery featured the sort of work on which the artist established reputation in the 1950s. The work was greeted with stunned amazement. However now it is too, but it's amazement of a different order -- the kind that comes from being in the presence of effortless artistic mastery. These astonishing vessels are truly amaising. Every ceramic artist knows that what goes into a kiln looks very different from what comes out, and although what comes out can be controlled to varying degrees, it's never certain. Uncertainty feels actively courted in Voulkos' vessels, and this embrace of chance gives them a surprisingly contradictory sense of ease. Critical to the emergence of a significant art scene in Los Angeles in the second half of the 1950s, the 75-year-old artist has lived in Northern California since 1959 and this was his only second solo show in an L.A gallery in 30 years."These days, L.A. is recognized as a ce nter for the production of contemporary art. But in the 1950s, the scene was slim -- few galleries and fewer museums. Despite the obscurity, a handful of solitary and determined artists broke ground here, stretching the inflexible definitions of what constitutes painting, sculpture and other media. Among these avant-gardists was Peter Voulkos." In 1954, Voulkos was hired as chairman of the fledgling ceramics department at the L.A. County Art Institute, now Otis College of Art and Design, and during the five years that followed, he led what came to be known as the Clay Revolution. Students like John Mason, Paul Soldner, Ken Price and Billy Al Bengston, all of whom went on to become respected artists, were among his foot soldiers in the battle to free clay from its handicraft associations. By the late 1950s, Voulkos had established an international reputation for his muscular fired-clay sculptures, which melded Zen attitudes toward chance with the emotional fervor of Abstract Expressi onist painting. Some 20 works -- including five Stacks (4-foot-tall sculptures) as well as giant slashed-and-gouged plates and works on paper -- recently went on view at the Frank Lloyd Gallery. This non single show is his first at a Los Angeles gallery in 13 years, although a survey of his work was seen at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (presently carries a different name) in 1995. Voulkos, 75, has lived in Oakland since 1959, "having left after a fallout with the then-director of the Art Institute, Millard Sheets, who is best known for mosaic murals on local bank facades." Although Voulkos has been absent from L.A. for 40 years, he remains something of an icon for artists here. Price, known for his candy-colored ovoid clay sculptures, puts it simply: In one way or another, he influenced everyone who makes art out of clay, since he was the main force in liberating the material. He broke down all the rules -- form follows function, truth in materials -- because he wanted to make art that had something to do with his own time and place. He had virtuoso technique, so he was able to do it fairly directly, and he worked in a really forceful way. In the opinion of many artists he is the most important person in clay of the 20th century, not for what he did himself, but for the ground that he broke. In his interview with US art critics Voulkos said: "I never intended on being revolutionary, there was a certain energy around L.A. at that time, and I liked the whole milieu." "Wielding clay is magic," he says. "The minute you touch it, it moves, so you've got to move with it. It's like a ritual. I always work standing up, so I can move my body around. I don't sit and make dainty little things." As a child, Voulkos did not imagine a future as an internationally influential artist. The third of five children born to Greek immigrant parents in Bozeman, Mont., he could not afford a college education and anticipated a career constructing floor molds for engine castings at a foundry in Portland, Ore., where he went to work in 1942, after high school. But in 1943, he

A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace Grace UnderhillMrs. MatoneEnglish 9H-F3 October 2013In a Separate Peace, John Knowles suggests that Devon is a microcosm of the world at that time. a microcosm is a smaller version of a larger world. For example, John Knowles suggests this is through the boys jumping off the tree, which was sometimes used a form of training for the war. In addition, the boys at Devon have enemies just as there are in war. Finally, the ultimate goal in war is peace, which the boys search for throughout the book.To begin with, jumping out of a high tree is a form of training for the upperclassmen, the seniors. Gene explains this type of training on page 15 as "The class above, seniors were caught up in a physical hardening regimen, which included jumping from this tree." In the beginning of the book Gene and Finny creates a club that members would jump from this tree every night, the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session.In this club, every night the members woud meet to jump out of the tree. To be on this club you had to jump from the tree and the leaders, Gene and Finny, would jump first. Also, Finny refers back to jumping out of the tree as a form of training when he was talking to Mr. Prud'homme on page 22 "The real reason, sir, was that we just had to jump out of that tree We had to do that naturally because we're all getting ready for the war."Another way Devon is a microcosm is just like there are enemies in war, there are many enemies at Devon. These enemies aren't all between two different people, a multitude of them are between people and themselves. One example of...