KAREN KARNES

3 - 25 October 2007

Karen Karnes in her studio. Photo Joyce Dobbertin

Karen Karnes (b. 1925) has the distinction of being at once one of the best known and least understood artists in American ceramics. Most often she is described as a traditionalist. There is nothing wrong with this title and in a limited sense is does apply. Karnes has a deep respect for the traditions of her medium. She uses traditional techniques like salt-glazing and wood firing. Her work deals almost exclusively with the vessel and she often deals with utility. But the label implies that she has a conservative approach to pottery and, like the Leach school for instance, she is aesthetically dependant upon an historical style of work. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Karnes began her career as a modernist, experimenting with biomorphism or “free form” as it was known in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.  The legendary Gio Ponti, architect, designer and editor of Domus, was greatly impressed, prominently featured her work in his journal. The firm of Richard Ginori asked her to design for them, she was invited to show on the Milan Trienale and two pots sent by her to the 16th Ceramic National in 1951 Syracuse, the first ever submitted to a competition, earned her the Lord and Taylor Purchase Prize.     

She has never been captive of the ceramic community alone and from 1952 to 1979 lived in two legendary arts communities, Black Mountain College and the Gatehill community, with Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenburg and Jack Tworkov, amongst others. If anything there is a restless, reinventing avant-garde spirit in Karnes’s her art underlying the formal architecture of her pots.

This searching quality in her work has won her many collectors in the fine arts world who both enjoy and understand the toughness and purity of her aesthetic. One finds as many collections of her work in downtown lofts of Manhattan’s art community as one does in the more traditional crafts world. And when Isamu Noguchi organized his own museum and sculpture garden in Queens, New York, the only artist he allowed to be shown other than himself Karnes (represented by a pair of large garden seats that he had acquired from Karnes in the late 1960’s.)

Her seamless journey through seven decades and tens of thousands of pots has not been just a personal odyssey. It has been an inspirational journey for many in the field. As her friend and fellow potter Michael Zakin remarked “I have never known any artist who has lived her life and make her art with such integrity and with such a clear unswerving sense of purpose.”

And as much as she has shifted gears from salt glazing to wood-fire there is also an element of timelessness, a consistency.  This quality is perfectly captured in the following quotation; “[Karnes] produces pottery of graceful strength and unstudied dignity, expertly fashioned to fulfill the requirements of its service. Created quietly from her living and for living with, her stoneware fits the round of days, the rhythms of the weather, the rituals of the hearth, with their seeming sameness yet infinite variety.” The words fit her current work like a glove yet it is the closing coda of an article written for Craft Horizons by Dido Smith in 1958.

Nearly a half century later Karnes’s sense of “service” may have changed, attending a little less to the functional and a little more to the contemplative. But more importantly as we gaze over this vista of pots and time one realizes that Karnes determination and courage has been rewarded. She has achieved that goal that all artists seek and only a few achieve; Karnes has through her depth, consistency and authenticity managed to channel the universal.

Garth Clark
New York City
2007