Esoteric Survey

Doyle Lane : Master of Clay at the Huntington Art Museum, Library and Botanical Gardens. This is the first major museum retrospective on Doyle Lane (1923–2002). It's long overdue and certainly won't be the last. The exhibition was curated by Lauren Cross, who also wrote the accompanying book , which you need to get.  Most people know Lane's weed pots and maybe even the clay paintings, but this exhibition includes the whole breadth of his work. He made everything from ashtrays, lamps, bowls, beads, and even metalwork.  The book adds so much to what we know about Doyle. Lauren writes about Lane's childhood and time before moving to California, which hasn't been explored before. There is so much firsthand information about Lane, the person, from friends, relatives and in his own voice. The interviews are some of my favorite parts of the book. Reading transcripts of Doyle going into depth about his glaze process is next-level craft geek stuff. This post is more of an o...

Picking up the Frimkess pieces last weekend reminded me that I never did a post on  LACMA's exhibition on Magdalena. I saw it in September of 2024.  Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard was the first museum exhibition dedicated to Magdalena. Although she is mostly known for her ceramics, the Venezuelan-born, Los Angeles-based artist was trained in painting, printmaking, and sculpture in Venezuela, Chile, and New York. Spanning more than five decades, the exhibition features ceramics, paintings, and drawings, including works created with her husband, Michael Frimkess. Magdalena was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1929. She was orphaned at seven years old when her mother passed from cancer. After being raised by nuns, she moved to Chile at 19. She moved to the US when she was 33 after she was offered a residency at the Clay Art Center in New York. That is where she met her future husband Michael. They moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and they opened there studio in V...