Beyond Functional Ceramics

The American Museum of Ceramic Art pays tribute to clay artists who stepped outside the ceramics box.

Before the '60s, before innovative artist Peter Voulkos moved Abstract Expressionism from the canvas to the potter's wheel, ceramics was just cups, bowls and plates. For centuries, the clay arts has been traditional and functional, a tried and true wheel-thrown, slab-building process where individual expression was in the application of materials and variations of processes, but always within the limits of practicality. But, thanks to the current exhibition at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona and the work of George E. Ohr (1857–1918), it is evident that one lone clay master known as the “Mad Potter from Biloxi” infused the ceramic arts with originality and inventiveness long before it was stylish or daring to consider ceramics as anything but functional.





George Ohr Rising: The Emergence of an American Master is an exhibit of over 50 key ceramic pieces that Ohr created in Biloxi, Mississippi. Ahead of his time, the flamboyant potter with his massive mustache and wild eyes sought to move the ceramic arts out from being a means to create popular souvenir items, trinkets or practical mugs to give as gifts. He was determined not only to pursue the novel, but to stretch clay’s possibilities within its limits. In his rural studio, away from the big city and its fashionable ideas, Ohr began by doing away with the symmetrical nature of pottery and its acceptable clean edge. To achieve his desired end, he created asymmetrical cups and bowls with ruffled edges and graceful, meandering ribbon-like handles, which became his trademark. Ohr was not concerned with function, but sought something akin to sculpture, what might be possible, albeit, impractical. While sipping tea might become a balancing act or pouring gravy from a gravy boat might result in splatters, Ohr’s whimsical creations caught on. Not having the ability to see into the future when abstraction would forge ahead to more challenging uses of clay, Ohr’s experimentation was courageous for his time, a precursor of what was to come.

To show the Ohr era and after, AMOCA has organized the exhibition to include Other Mad Potters, a look at ceramic artists whose work is in the inventive vein of Ohr’s, but who, being contemporary, have added their own personal touch to the ceramics vocabulary. These include Steve Horn, Lisa Orr, Mary Roehm, and Georgette Ore (a.k.a. Don Pilcher). The artists also share Ohr’s subtle humor, his freedom to experiment with clay, superb skill, and playfulness that borders on the screwball.

There is yet another aspect of the exhibition: The word “rising” in the title refers not so much to Ohr but to “Rising from Destruction,” a theme taken on by Mississippi Gulf Coast inhabitants for their valiant efforts and recovery from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. What does that have to do with Ohr? In the aftermath of the storm, the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi suffered major damage, much as Ohr’s studio suffered when it was destroyed in 1894 in a fire. The museum that bears his name has adapted its motto to be “Ohr Rising” as the devastation came when the Ohr exhibit was to be held and the museum began rebuilding in time for the opening.

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