Ceramics

Kenneth Price, a prolific Los Angeles artist whose work with glazed and painted clay transformed traditional ceramics while also expanding orthodox definitions of American and European sculpture, died early Friday at his home and studio in Taos, N.M. He was 77. Price had struggled with tongue and throat cancer for several years, his food intake restricted to liquids supplied through a feeding tube. Despite his infirmity, he continued to produce challenging new work and to mount critically acclaimed exhibitions at galleries in Los Angeles, New York and Europe.

Over at the Getty Villa, a fantastic hybrid sculpture is holding court in a powerful exhibition that explores the ancient Mediterranean goddess Aphrodite. Based on a lost Greek original, a 1st century Roman carving of an exquisite hermaphrodite, part man and part woman, seductively writhes in a self-possessed erotic dream. Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently opened a similarly dazzling show centered on another ancient hybrid being -- this one a plumed serpent.

$4-million ceramics gift Thanks to a grateful alumna from the class of 1949, Scripps College and the affiliated Claremont Graduate University are getting $4 million in dough to benefit art students learning to work with clay. The gift for ceramic art programs at the two institutions in Claremont comes from Joan Lincoln and her husband, David, who live in Paradise Valley, Ariz. It includes a $3.5-million pledge to Scripps, funding a new, 3,000-square-foot ceramics building and an endowment for various ceramic art studies programs and exhibitions, and $500,000 to establish an endowment for graduate student scholarships at Claremont Graduate University.

Kenneth Price, a prolific Los Angeles artist whose work with glazed and painted clay transformed traditional ceramics while also expanding orthodox definitions of American and European sculpture, died early Friday at his home and studio in Taos, N.M. He was 77. Price had struggled with tongue and throat cancer for several years, his food intake restricted to liquids supplied through a feeding tube. Despite his infirmity, he continued to produce challenging new work and to mount critically acclaimed exhibitions at galleries in Los Angeles, New York and Europe.

Adrian Saxe is a ceramic artist known for juxtaposing the Historic and the Now with a trippy sense of humor. His latest musings in the show "GRIN — Genetic Robotic Information Nano," at Frank Lloyd Gallery through Jan. 7, incorporate Quick Response (QR) codes, or the square bar codes, into sculpture that emulate antique Chinese vases and scholar's rocks — rocks collected for their unusual and evocative forms. "Made to seduce and then betray, Saxe's elegant vessels present provocative concepts," curator Martha Drexler Lynn wrote for his 1993 retrospective at LACMA, "The Clay Art of Adrian Saxe.

Doreen Mellen can think of only one artist in her past — a great-aunt who painted on velvet. So it's hard to pinpoint the source of Mellen's talent and desire. "Somewhere along the way I just had this yearning," says Mellen, a ceramicist who grew up in Tasmania, the daughter of a train conductor and a housewife. "I was constantly doodling in school — even when I wasn't suppose to be. I'm a completely self-taught artist." After working for seven years in Brisbane, Australia, designing and manufacturing a line of women and children's clothing, she moved with her computer executive husband, Brian, to Canada in 1979.

A guest kind enough to volunteer for kitchen duty at my house is apt to be confronted by a variety of ceramic objects. These include mixed pieces of English bone china dinnerware, a couple of to-die-for Deco pitchers and nostalgia-laden Gallic hand-painted cafe-au-lait bowls of the Europe-on-$5-a-day era. Also in the inventory: an egg cup shaped like a shoe, a chipped butter dish with a Guernsey cow on the lid, and an "I Love My Mommy" mug.

Two of the world's largest manufacturers of industrial ceramics announced Thursday that they have agreed to what may be the first American-Japanese merger involving a stock swap worth about $531 million. AVX Corp. said it had agreed to merge with Kyocera Corp., the Kyoto, Japan-based maker of ceramics for electronic equipment. Kyocera also manufactures ceramics and other electronic components in its San Diego-based affiliate, Kyocera International Inc. The stock of AVX Corp.

Kevin Xiem Nguyen looks like the art student he once was, complete with clay-smeared shirt and glaze chips under his nails. But instead of throwing pots in some dim garage, he runs the Xiem Clay Center, a modern, light-washed space that opened last month in Pasadena. When he's not shaping his own graceful vessels out of porcelain or black mountain clay, he oversees the classes, workshops, shows and other activities offered by the center, which has 24 new wheels and three state-of-the-art kilns.

Five Bay Area ceramists who first exhibited locally 10 years ago have been reunited in an exhibition entitled "Ten Years Later" at Cal State Fullerton's Art Gallery (through March 8).

Eva Zeisel, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century who created lyrical yet practical tableware and ceramics, has died. She was 105. Zeisel, whose deceptively simple designs first became popular in the 1940s and are still sold at major design outlets, died Friday in New York City, it was announced on her website . "Eva Zeisel took industrial design and made it more human and sensual. She trusts that a good curve is enough," David Reid of design studio KleinReid, which features her work, told The Times in 2005.

Adrian Saxe is a ceramic artist known for juxtaposing the Historic and the Now with a trippy sense of humor. His latest musings in the show "GRIN — Genetic Robotic Information Nano," at Frank Lloyd Gallery through Jan. 7, incorporate Quick Response (QR) codes, or the square bar codes, into sculpture that emulate antique Chinese vases and scholar's rocks — rocks collected for their unusual and evocative forms. "Made to seduce and then betray, Saxe's elegant vessels present provocative concepts," curator Martha Drexler Lynn wrote for his 1993 retrospective at LACMA, "The Clay Art of Adrian Saxe.

Sori Yanagi, whose designs for stools and kitchen pots brought the simplicity and purity of Japanese decor into the everyday, has died. He was 96. The pioneer of Japan's industrial design died Sunday of pneumonia in a Tokyo hospital, Koichi Fujita of Yanagi Design Office said. Yanagi's curvaceous "butterfly stool," evocative of a Japanese shrine gate, won an award at the Milan Triennale museum and design exhibition in 1957 and helped elevate him to international stature. The work — made of two pieces of molded plywood fixed together with a brass pin — later joined the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre museum in Paris.

The shift in ceramics from craft to art form was a quiet revolution in postwar Southern California. "Common Ground: Ceramics in Southern California 1945-1975" at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona explores that big topic through the influence of one man, Millard Sheets, a painter who taught and was an administrator at Chouinard Art Institute, Otis Art Institute and Scripps College. It was Sheets who brought the legendary avant-gardist Peter Voulkos to California to run the ceramics department at Otis.

EVENTS Get a jump start on the holiday shopping at the 29th Annual Irvine Holiday Faire festive boutique, which will feature hand-blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, folk crafts, porcelain, dolls, clothing, holiday decorations from more than 150 vendors. Proceeds from the fair are put back into the local arts community. Irvine Fine Arts Center, 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine. 5-9 p.m. Fri., 9 a.m.- 4 p.m. Sat. $2. (949) 724-6880.

A large but little-noticed mural that a noted ceramic artist, F. Carlton Ball, created in an alcove of a public library branch in Whittier is having its moment in the spotlight after what may or may not have been a near-brush with the wrecking ball. "Pictures of Children's Stories" is 12 feet high and 8 feet wide and has stood in a short passageway between the circulation desk and the adult wing of the Whittwood Branch Library since the building opened in 1968. It consists of more than 100 square and rectangular tiles of irregular size, in glazed-over shades of blue, green, copper and silver.

Looking for the latest Fred Flintstone tiles for the bathroom? Or a framed tile reproduction of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus"? Or marble inlaid with semiprecious stones? From marble mosaics to plain whites, the world's biggest ceramic tile and natural stone show will be open to the public for free Saturday at the International Tile and Stone Exposition. About 12,000 people are expected to file through the Anaheim Convention Center from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

In this age of great slabs of granite and marble, consider the humble ceramic tile. This decorative material has graced structures from grand castles to humble huts for ages. Edited by Gordon Lang, a Sotheby's ceramics expert, "1000 Tiles" uses expert authors to chronicle the last 1,000 years of tile's stylistic evolution, including medieval, Victorian, Art Nouveau and Islamic examples.

As a leading contemporary ceramic artist, Elsa Rady created elegantly simple porcelain vessels and often controlled how they were presented by bolting the refined pieces into place. "She really forged her own path and became a force," said Jo Lauria, an independent curator who included Rady's work in "Craft in America," a national touring show that debuted in 2007. "Calculating the experience of the viewer ? I don't know of any other artist who is her equal in that," Lauria said.

Paul Soldner, a ceramicist and longtime Scripps College teacher who introduced a pottery technique called American raku, died Monday at his home in Claremont after a period of declining health. He was 89. "He was one of the greats in California ceramics ? part of the West Coast scene that came on in the '60s with Peter Voulkos, John Mason and Ken Price," said Doug Casebeer, an artistic director at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colo., which Soldner helped to found.