Video courtesy of Peter Callas
Peter Callas is a pioneering figure in the field of ceramics and built the first Anagama in North America in 1976. He has since become America’s preeminent authority on the Japanese wood-firing technique. An internationally acclaimed ceramist, he combines this ancient firing technique with the wabi-sabi aesthetic of imperfection and abstraction, resulting in energetic, dramatic works that pulse with life and appear to have been born straight from the fires of the earth.
An Anagama, in Japanese “cave kiln,” is a type of kiln that was brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century AD, consisting of a single-chamber kiln built in a sloping tunnel shape with a firebox at one end and flue at the other. In an Anagama there is no physical barrier between the stoking space and the pottery space, allowing flame and ash to interact with the surface of the clay and, in contrast to electric or gas-fueled kilns, they are fueled solely by a continuous supply of firewood. The length of a firing depends on the size of the kiln and can vary anywhere from two to twelve days and the fire must be fed and stoked around the clock. The final appearance of pots depends on many factors including both the reached and sustained temperatures, the amount of ash, and the wetness of the walls and the pots themselves. It takes a vast amount of knowledge and skill to utilize the Anagama’s effects on pottery to their fullest potential: Peter Callas is one such master.
We sat down with Callas to discuss his life, work, and connection with the late, great Peter Voulkos.
Can you describe your artistic background, what drew you to ceramics, and why you decided to make it your life’s work?
My career in art began in college when I took a ceramics course in Nebraska. After transferring to The University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA in my sophomore year I became an art major and graduated in 1973. As an artist in resident at The Archie Bray Foundation I fell in love with the material and the process and decided to make it my life’s work.
Do you come from a creative background? How did your family and the place that you come from shape you?
My parents were very inspirational to my interest in the arts. My stepfather was a Hot Jazz aficionado, so music was always in the background. Both my parents shared a passion for collecting fine art, especially French antiques, so growing up there was a treasure trove of art in our home.
How would you define the style of your work and its development?
From the time I spent in the Pacific Northwest I grew to love nature’s rugged beauty. The Pacific Rim exposed me to Asian ceramics, especially Japanese ceramics, which help mold my style of abstract art in the wabi-sabi style.
Some evenings I create art. Sometimes I search art out. Sometimes I run into it accidentally.
Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos 1924–2002
Few artists can revolutionize an ancient medium, but Peter Voulkos did just that when he brought ceramics into the realm of fine art starting in the late 1950s. Born in Bozeman, Montana in 1924, he studied painting and ceramics at Montana State University and later received his MFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland. While Voulkos began his career by creating utilitarian objects such as bowls and vases that won him wide renown, he began to contemplate abstraction and other fine art principles when he spent the summer of 1953 teaching at Black Mountain College, there he met Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Josef Albers. From there, he visited New York, meeting many of the Abstract Expressionists.
Voulkos returned to California to teach at Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) from 1954 to 1959 and it was in this period that his works really began to evolve. As the decade came to a close, Voulkos moved away from creating functional items, instead morphing vase-like structures into sculpture. He slashed the clay in certain instances and aggressively applied paint to the forms like canvas. No longer content to create works that hid their process of creation, Voulkos made the very act of creation paramount to the understanding and appreciation of his work, much like the Abstract Expressionists that he had associated with.
Voulkos’ artistic output piqued the interest of Peter Selz, the Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1960, he invited Voulkos to exhibit six of his paintings alongside a number of his sculptures as part of the New Talent series, one man exhibitions that the museum had been offering since 1950 to artists who had not yet had solo exhibitions in New York. Voulkos used this opportunity to illustrate the connection between painting, the classic example of fine-art, and ceramics. After his show at MoMA, the artist spent the summers of 1960-1962, and 1964 in New York teaching and creating work at the famed Greenwich House Pottery and Columbia University.
Peter Voulkos brought ceramics into the realm of fine art. He died in 2002, but his legacy is remembered in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
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