POTTER
HELPED TURN
CERAMICS INTO FINE ART
by SUE MANNING Associated Press Writer
World renowned potter Harrison McIntosh poses at his home in Claremont, Calif.,
Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. McIntosh, 94, has made more
than 9,000 pieces since he started keeping track in
1953. More than 100 pieces will be on display Sept.
12 through Nov. 28 at the American Museum of Ceramic
Art in Pomona, Calif.
(AP Photo/Philip Scott Andrews)
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With his hands on the wheel, Harrison McIntosh helped steer
ceramics from minor craft toward fine art for more than
half a century.
The 94-year-old studio potter has made more than 9,000 pieces
since he started keeping track in 1953. Some of those are
in museums around the world, from the Louvre in France,
the Mingei in Japan and the Smithsonian in Washington to
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the San Diego Museum
of Fine Art.
More than 100 pieces will be on display Sept. 12 through
Nov. 28 at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona,
35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles and just a few miles
from McIntosh's home and studio in Claremont.
A soft-spoken, unassuming man with steady hands and a quick
smile, McIntosh is nearly blind and hasn't thrown a pot
in five years. But he and Marguerite, his artist-wife-agent-fan
of 57 years, love to talk about his work, which the ceramic
museum calls "A Timeless Legacy."
Occasionally, someone will tell McIntosh they own one of
his best pieces. He laughs and says, "I always tried
to make each piece I worked on my best."
Perfection has more than one meaning, his wife said.
"Harrison never worked fast. He's slow in everything
and that's why he has a quality that is special to his work,"
she said.
"In a work of art, you have to put your soul into it.
If you work too hard toward physical perfection, you may
destroy the soul and the initial inspiration. This is what
Harrison means by perfect. It still has the spirit that
he wanted originally. It has nothing to do with the technical
perfection of a line."
McIntosh, who turns 95 the day before his exhibit starts,
shared his studio with buddy Rupert "Rummy" Deese.
The men fired all their work in a secondhand kiln they bought
in San Diego in 1950. The potters were among those who helped
blur the line between fine art and decorative or applied
or functional art.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
has long displayed American art without distinguishing between
the two, said Kevin Murphy, the museum's associate curator
of American art.
In its permanent exhibit, a McIntosh pot is displayed next
to a Robert Motherwell painting.
For years, McIntosh and other artists met weekly at Walter's
Restaurant in Claremont. McIntosh, Deese, Sam Maloof —
one of most famous furniture makers in the country —
and painter James Heuter became known as "The Four
Friends," but they often shared their table with the
likes of Karl Benjamin or Paul Darrow.
These designers, potters, painters and sculptors all worked
together and fed off each other's ideas, Murphy said. "They
were not making things into something they were not, but
borrowing from fine art while respecting their own mediums."
A half-century ago, McIntosh sold his work for $1.50 a piece.
Younger brother Robert would sell the pots to eager Disney
colleagues.
Today, one of McIntosh's pots might bring $15,000 and one
of his sculptures as much as $25,000.
McIntosh and his wife recently moved into a retirement apartment,
leaving the family home and studio to daughter Catherine
McIntosh, who is preparing the September exhibit.
But there is artwork all around the house. And it isn't
just McIntosh's. He would often swap pieces with friends.
McIntosh traded with Maloof for an exquisite dining room
table. Today it sits with one of his pots on top and Benjamin
art behind it.
Inspiration for his work came from teachers, mentors and
friends, as well as the cosmos, environment, architecture
and literature, McIntosh said.
"I never made any pieces for any particular purpose
other than just as forms I enjoyed making," he said.
Many of his pots are painted a blue-green color that he
calls his favorite.
"Part of the enjoyment of three-dimensional art is
feeling its organization — how it fills the space,"
Christy Johnson, the ceramic art museum's director, said
in her essay on McIntosh's exhibit. "Perhaps never
verbalized or even analyzed, it is obvious in Harrison's
work that these theories were absorbed through personal
exposure and hands-on practice."
McIntosh was born in Vallejo outside San Francisco. Despite
the Great Depression, his parents encouraged the interest
he and his brother showed in art. McIntosh joined his family
in Los Angeles in 1937 and took his first potter's class,
at the University of Southern California, in 1940. Drafted
by the Army during World War II, he was discharged when
his first wife became critically ill and died.
He made his way back to ceramics and the Claremont Colleges.
Early influences included Al King, Richard Petterson and
Marguerite Wildenhain, a master potter who urged her students
to study the structure of a leaf, the geometry of a stone
and the symmetry of a petal, McIntosh and Johnson said.
Then he became part of the "California look" that
became so popular during the postwar promise of prosperity.
Magazines such as House Beautiful and Art and Architecture
showcased the talent of various artists, including McIntosh,
Maloof, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nakashima and others.
McIntosh loved being a studio potter, working with mid-temperature
clay, oxidization firing, simple forms, mostly matte glazes
and spare decoration, Johnson said. Peter Voulkos came along
with his "clay revolution," turning potters into
"sculptural, freeform, nonfunctional, experimental,
serendipitous and improvisational" artists, but McIntosh
stayed true to his studio work.
In 1952, Marguerite Loyau had come from Paris to attend
Pomona College on a scholarship. She went with a friend
to the Los Angeles County Fair, where she met McIntosh,
a student in one of Petterson's classes. He, Millard Sheets
and the students were setting up art and craft displays.
After some letters and a one-way return ticket from Paris,
there was a wedding.
McIntosh substituted for Voulkos as a teacher just once.
He never returned to the classroom because it wasn't his
thing. He made some prototype pieces for Metlock pottery,
worked part-time for Interpace Industries for 10 summers
between 1970 and 1980, and he and his wife designed ceramic
dinnerware and crystal for Mikasa. But he always returned
to his studio.
McIntosh's pots have numbers, but his sculptures have names
such as Eclipse, Cosmic Form and Mystic Symbols, which "all
refer to the collective thinking of mankind," Johnson
said.
Martha W. Longenecker-Roth, Ph.D., founding president and
director emeritus of the Mingei International Museum in
San Diego, said McIntosh makes it look easy.
"The beauty of his creations seems to be the flowering
of his life," said Longenecker-Roth, who is also the
ceramics and design professor at San Diego State University.
"To me, they are reflections of his whole being of
integrity and humility in life's relationships," said
"Like all enduring art, it leaves nothing to be added
or taken away. It serenely speaks for itself." Written
by SUE MANNING
Associated Press Writer |
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