80th Ceramic Annual / Scripps College

80th Scripps College Ceramic Annual

Starting in 1945, Scripps College has been mounting these legendary annual exhibitions. This year, they combined two major California collections for In the Hands of the Collector: The Fred Marer and Forrest L. Merrill Collections.

Guest curated by Nancy Servis, there are over 100 pieces by more than 60 artists.

Fred donated his collection of over 1,500 pieces to Scripps. Forrest has over 4,000 and counting. They both acquired many works directly from the artists and California ceramics are at the core. Since Fred was in southern California, these direct purchases came from people working at Otis and other institutions around LA. Forrest started his collection through direct purchases in the Bay Area, since he's from Berkeley. He's also still at it.

There are some classics.

This Laura Andreson teapot is the first piece collected by Fred Marer.

Glen Lukens

Antonio Prieto from Forrest

James Lovera was so good and is still sorta of a sleeper.

Kenneth Starbird from the Merril Collection. Ken taught ceramics at Cal State Los Angeles and was featured in multiple California Design exhibitions. He's another artist who is pretty under the radar.

Peter Voulkos is not under the radar.

Is that you Henry?

This Henry Takemoto has been part of previous exhibitions at Scripps and AMOCA. Not a bad repeat at all.

Takemoto studied at Otis under Voulkos in the late 50's.

Another Takemoto

And one more

Joel Edwards also studied under Voulkos at Otis. He recieved an MFA in 1957.

This is an exceptional piece by Edwards and is from Forrest's collection, but Fred was also a fan.

So am I and they are still pretty reasonable.

John Mason also went to Otis. He shared a studio with Voulkos. Takemoto also fired some pots there as well.

Another Otis-era Voulkos but what's behind it?

On the wall between an Arneson and vitrine of Natzlers is...

A piece by my good friend and very talented artist, Tung Chiang. It's from the Merrill collection. I'm lucky enough to have one of his early studio pieces in my collection and some from his Design Series at Heath.

One of the Natzlers

Another Otis group potter, Jerry Rothman. His Sky pots started in the 1960s after a visit to Japan.

Michael Frimkess, who after a peyote-induced vision of himself throwing a perfectly-shaped vessel, started to study ceramics at Otis--also under Voulkos. Michael passed away last month.