RUDY AUTIO  •  BIO

PETER VOULKOS  •  BIO

FRANCES SENSKA  •  BIO

KEN FERGUSON  •  BIO

DAVID SHANER  •  BIO

AKIO TAKAMORI  •  BIO

BRIAN PERSHA, DAVID PLEDGE, JOHN TAKEHARA, JOHN WARD

ARTIST BIOS

RUDY AUTIO

Rudy Autio (1926-2007) was a sculptor known primarily for his large scale, boldly decorated ceramic vessels.

Born in Butte, Montana, Autio attended Montana State College where he studied under Frances Senska, befriended Peter Voulkos, and received his Bachelor of Science in Applied Art in 1950. While attending Washington State University, Autio, along with Voulkos were invited by Archie Bray to work at his Western Clay Manufacturing Company. Bray eventually established the Archie Bray Foundation, making Autio and Voulkos the founding resident artists. After Autio graduated with his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture, he worked at the foundation full time. By 1957, he left to teach ceramics and sculpture at the University of Montana until his retirement in 1985.

Inspired by the work of Voulkos, some of Autio’s earliest works consisted of abstract expressionist pots, but he would also create stained glass windows, bronzes, tile murals, metal works, and tapestries. He is best known for his large ceramic vessels wrapped in figurative illustrations inspired by Matisse and DeKooning, and colored with rich hued glazes. Autio is member of the American Crafts Council and received several awards, including the Tiffany Award in Crafts (1963), the American Ceramic Society Art Award (1978), the Governors Award in the State of Montana (1981), the American Craftsman’s Gold Medal Award (1999) and the James Renwick Alliance’s “Master of the Medium” for clay (2007). His work is included in the collections of the American Craft Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and many more.

For a more complete narrative of Rudy Autio's life and legacy, click here.

RETURN TO ARTWORKS

PETER VOULKOS

Peter Voulkos (1924-2002) is known for his abstract ceramic sculptures and plates that set the stage for the mid-twentieth century break with traditional concepts of clay, functional pots, and the potter.

Born in Bozeman, Montana, Voulkos enrolled in Montana State College after serving in the US Army during World War II. In college he was influenced by his instructor, Frances Senska, and spent countless hours honing his skills as a potter. It was also at Montana State that he met Rudy Autio, another ceramist who would go on to have a seismic impact on the field. It was with Autio that Voulkos took a job in the summer of 1951 at The Western Clay Manufacturing Company in Helena, Montana. Archie Bray, the owner of Western Clay, invited the two back the following year, this time as the inaugural artists-in-residence at the newly formed Archie Bray Foundation. At The Bray Voulkos primarily made traditional decorated pottery, but in the summer of 1953 he spent time at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and had his first extended exposure to Abstract Expressionism, a new and exciting movement in the visual arts. It would forever change Voulkos's approach to his practice.

Voulkos went on to be an influential ceramics teacher. He founded two major ceramics programs: the first in 1954 at the Otis College of Art and Design, then called the Los Angeles County Art Institute, at which his work rapidly became abstract and sculptural; and the second in 1958 at the University of California, Berkeley. His programs produced an impressive roster of professional artists, many of whom went on to teach, and whose combined output represents much of the iconic work of the 20th century. During this time, Voulkos produced new forms that were aggressively asymmetrical, no longer needed to be useful, sometimes crudely formed, and very controversial.

Voulkos is credited with pushing back the boundaries of clay, literally reinventing American ceramics. His work clearly crossed the traditional divide separating ceramic as craft and ceramics as fine art.

RETURN TO ARTWORKS

FRANCES SENSKA

Sometimes referred to as the "grandmother of ceramics in Montana," Frances Senska (1914-2009) was an artist and art professor who contributed in myriad important ways to the state's burgeoning reputation as a locus for the ceramic arts. In 1946 she founded the ceramics program at Montana State College in Bozeman. Senska's students included a number of influential ceramists, including Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos.

Born in the port city of Batanga in the German Empire colony of Kamerun (now Batanga, Cameroon), Senska came to America for the first time in 1929. She earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Iowa in 1935 and 1939, respectively. Her undergraduate training was in lithography, and her graduate degree in applied arts, specializing in sculpture. From 1939 to 1942 she taught art at Grinnell College, then spent the next four years serving in the United States Navy during World War II. She was posted to a base in San Francisco and became interested in ceramics after taking a class from legendary ceramist Edith Heath, then teaching at the California Labor School. Senska also studied under Maija Grotell at Cranbrook and Marguerite Wildenhain at Pond Farm, solidifying her serious modernist credentials.

After relocating to Bozeman and resuming her career as an art professor, Senska influenced the development of the Archie Bray Foundation from its very beginnings and was a founding member of the Montana Institute for the Arts (now Montana Arts Council). Honors Senska received over the course of her career include an honorary membership to the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) in 1979, an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Montana State University in 1982, a fellowship with the American Craft Council in 1988, the Montana Governor's Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts in 1988, and the Archie Bray Foundation's Meloy-Stevenson Award of Distinction for Outstanding Service in 2003.

RETURN TO ARTWORKS

KEN FERGUSON

Born in Elwood, Indiana, Ken Ferguson (1928-2004) remains a powerful presence in American ceramics, known for melding a range of cultural traditions in his work. He is also widely considered one of the most influential educators in the field, having taught John and Andrea Gill, Richard Notkin, Akio Takamori, and Kurt Weiser, among many other top professionals ceramists.

Ferguson studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, where he received his BFA. In 1958 he earned his MFA from Alfred University in New York. Ferguson spent the next six years serving as Resident Director of the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, where started a small clay business to help support the foundation financially. In 1964 he took over as head of the Ceramics department at the Kansas City Art Institute until retiring as professor emeritus in 1996.

In addition to his work as an educator, Ferguson had an active exhibition career. In 1995 his work was surveyed in exhibitions at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Kemper Museum of Art, both in Kansas City, Missouri. Ken Ferguson received the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art Award in 1997 and the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal in 1998.

RETURN TO ARTWORKS

DAVID SHANER

David Shaner (1934-2002) is an icon in the field of American ceramic art. He studied with ceramic masters Charles Harder, Ken Ferguson, Dan Rhodes, and Ted Randall at Alfred University while earning his MFA degree. He taught at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana for several years before moving to Helena, Montana, to join Ken Ferguson in running the Archie Bray Foundation. He guided The Bray through a financial crisis in the 1960s and raised funds to purchase the foundation grounds and facilities. Through National Endowment for the Arts grants, The Bray was able to award residency grants to potters from around the country. It became a vital facility for ceramic artists.

In 1974 Shaner developed a black, metallic manganese crystal glaze, which he named in honor of the pueblo potter Maria Martinez. Other glazes he developed reflect his own name: Shaner Red and Shaner Gold. In 1978 he received an NEA Craftsmen’s Fellowship to research wood-firing techniques. He traveled to Lima, Cuzco, and Machu Picchu in 1984 to study Peruvian ceramics.

Admiring smooth bedrock formations along the Oregon coast, Shaner translated this simplicity into drape molded pots that he called "pillow forms." Keenly attuned to nature, the artist drew connections between life and art, stating: "My pots are not about risk-taking. They are about serenity, clarity, simplicity. Some people like to climb mountains, I like to walk through meadows of wildflowers."

RETURN TO ARTWORKS

AKIO TAKAMORI

Akio Takamori (1950-2017) was born in Nobeoka, Miyazaki, Japan. The son of a dermatologist who ran a clinic located near a red light district, Takamori was exposed to a wide range of people from an early age. At home, his father’s extensive library of both art and medical texts became a fascination for Takamori, who relished everything from Picasso reproductions to anatomical charts.

Takamori’s interest in the arts persisted into early adulthood and upon his graduation from the University of Tokyo, he apprenticed to a master folk potter at Koishiwara, Kyushu. When renowned American ceramist Ken Ferguson visited the pottery, the two had an immediate rapport and Ferguson encouraged Takamori to go to the United States and study with him at the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1974 Takamori made the move to the United States, receiving his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and later attending Alfred University in New York for his graduate degree. After working as a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, he moved to Seattle and took a teaching position as associate professor of the ceramics department at the University of Washington.

Takamori’s evolution as an artist began as he worked with Ferguson to break free of the constraints of industrial pottery and find new ways to express himself in clay. Since those first years at the Kansas City Art Institute his work changed greatly, but it was always figurative, based on the human body and expressive of human emotion and sensuality.

RETURN TO ARTWORKS