Ka Kwong Hui 1922–2003
When Ka Kwong Hui immigrated to the United States in 1948, he brought with him a deep understanding and passion for Chinese cultural traditions and art forms. For three decades starting in 1957, he cultivated a fulfilling career as a beloved and talented ceramics professor at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Jersey. Though Hui made America his home, his Chinese heritage greatly informed his work. His bold colors and abstracted geometric shapes layer upon architectural forms that often resemble shrines or altars, an aesthetic that ceramics scholar Michael McTwigan termed "Chinese Gothic."
In the mid-1960s Hui was approached by Roy Lichtenstein, then a fellow colleague at Rutgers, to collaborate on a line of ceramic tableware. Hui tested hundreds of glazes and forms over the course of this collaboration. The results were very well received, generating gallery shows, exhibitions, and press in the American contemporary ceramics scene, all of which helped to propel Hui's career. In the ensuing years, Hui's work continued to be rooted in Chinese and Tibetan traditions, but began to show the influence of his work with Lichtenstein through the implementation of a more vibrant palette and the use of white or colored outlines to delineate elements. Often, his forms are wildly organic, producing an inviting, even cheerful emotive response, which deftly balances the scaling of his works.
In 1997, Hui was honored as a Fellow by the American Craft Council (ACC) and his work can be found in public museum collections including Brooklyn Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, The Newark Museum of Art, the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
