KURT WEISER – (1950 - )
ASU Regents’ Professor of Art Kurt Weiser studied ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute under Ken Ferguson and received his M.F.A. from the University of Michigan. He served as Director of the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT, for over 10 years before joining the faculty at ASU in 1988. His early work was porcelain vessels finished in an abstract, non- representational style, but in the 1990’s he began experimenting with china paints. Since then his work has evolved from rich evocations of plant life to narratives which incorporate figures from myth and history into his tropical landscapes, meticulously painted onto porcelain teapots, globes and other vessels, and fired multiple times. The result: “the painting is the three dimensional reality.”
ARTIST’S STATEMENT – KURT WEISER
“For years the work I did in ceramics was an effort to somehow express the formal and beautiful nature of the material. As interesting as this exploration was, I always had the vague feeling that the best expression of the material only came as a gift of nature…Somewhere in the midst of this struggle I realized that the materials are there to allow you to say what you need to say, not to tell you what to say. So I gave up trying to control nature and decided to use what I had learned about the materials to express some ideas about nature itself and my place in it…The ideas and subjects of these paintings on the pots are for the most part just a collection of my own history of fantasy and view of reality. They are built the same way we dream: around a central idea, a cast of other characters and environments just seem to show up to complete the picture.”1
1. Weiser, Kurt D., Peter Held, Ulysses G. Dietz et al. Eden Revisited: the Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Art Museum, Herberger College of the Arts, 2007, 40.
RESUME – KURT WEISER
1950 Born, Lansing Michigan
1967-1969 Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen, MI
1969 Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts, Detroit, MI
1969-1972 B.F.A., Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
1972 Instructor, Portland Art Museum Art School
1972-1974 Studio Artist, Portland, OR
1973 Instructor, Marylhurst College, Marylhurst, OR Marries artist Christy Lasater
1974-1976 M.F.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
1977-1988 Studio Artist, Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT Resident Director, Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT
1986 Visual Artist Fellowship, Montana Arts Council
1988-present Professor, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Studio Artist, Tempe, AZ
1989, 1992 Visual Artist Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
1998 Artist Fellowship Grant, Asian Cultural Council Research and Creativity Award, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
1999 Regents Professorship, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Artist Fellowship Grant, Arizona Commission on the Arts
2003 Path of Inspiration Award, Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen, MI Aileen Osborn Webb Award College of Fellows, American Craft Council
2007 Meloy-Stevenson Award of Distinction, Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT
BIOGRAPHY – KURT WEISER
Born in Lansing, MI, and raised in the college town of East Lansing, the oldest of five children, Kurt Weiser’s youth paralleled that of many children in the post-war years. Weiser does not remember the arts playing an important part in his family’s life, but interestingly enough, three of the five siblings did follow a career in the arts, with one sister pursuing a career in dance, another a career in acting, and Kurt in the visual arts. Among his best memories are visiting his grandparents in the Iron Mountain region of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and digging and playing in the blue clay called “Michigan slip” found in East Lansing. The clay was very plastic and Weiser and his friends made “Indian” pots, pipes, and other things which they then tried to fire in a fireplace, his first introduction to ceramics. He also remembers Korean pottery that he saw at the home of a friend, field trips to the nearby natural history museum with its collection of old pottery, and visits to the Art Center at Michigan State University, where he watched the art students and viewed exhibitions. “I remember looking at these pots and being totally fascinated. There was some sort of primitive energy that I didn’t understand but it intrigued me,” he said.1 His interest in art was not matched by his interest in school, and he dropped out in the ninth grade. Hoping to encourage him to finish his education, his parents enrolled him in Interlochen Arts Academy, the first boarding high school in the U.S. to specialize in fine arts. Suspicious at first, Weiser found he loved it there, studying painting and ceramics and graduating in 1968 with a number of awards.
Although he was offered a full scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, he chose instead to enroll in the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. After a semester he found it too limiting and too close to home so he applied to and was accepted at the Kansas City Art Institute. His work caught the eye of the iconic Ken Ferguson, then the head of the department, and after a brief interview, Weiser was allowed to enroll in the ceramics program. The list of his fellow students reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary ceramics: Andrea and John Gill, Richard Notkin, Rick Hensley, Stanley Welsh, to name a few, plus Christy Lasater who would later become his wife. Weiser continued to advance and amaze as a ceramist, and as he neared graduation, Ferguson encouraged him to apply to Alfred University. Weiser, however, was never one to follow the traditional path; instead he accepted an offer from Tom Coleman to move to Oregon to teach at the Portland Art Museum’s Art School. Weiser recalls that at the time he didn’t know how to drive, “…so I learned…went back to Michigan and bought a pickup truck….built a potter’s wheel that summer in Kansas City and threw that in the back of the truck and drove to Oregon.”2 Weiser remained in Oregon for two years, teaching first at the Portland Art Museum and the second year at Marylhurst College, and making functional pots to earn some money. After two years he was ready to return to school. He enrolled in the University of Michigan, graduating with an M.F.A. in 1976.
At that point he was looking for the next direction his career would take, and once again it was Ken Ferguson who offered advice. The Archie Bray Foundation was looking for a new Resident Director and Ferguson suggested he apply. Both the Bray Foundation and its artists are legendary, and the opportunity to work there made all other possibilities pale in comparison. To say the Bray was a challenge is to understate it. There was a great deal to be done to allow the Bray to function and survive, much less move ahead, so for the next several years Weiser had his hands full, revitalizing the clay operation, boosting production in the studios, and working toward making the Bray a going concern. His own work at this time was functional vessels and plates using slip and ash glazes, although he also worked in raku and experimented with glazing techniques. During his tenure as Resident Director he expanded the reach of the Bray to include foreign artists in the program and orchestrated the purchase of an adjoining parcel which allowed the expansion of both the residency program and the clay operations. By the end of his tenure he had set the Bray on its way to financial security and enlarged its artistic reach. Now it was time to turn his attention to his own evolving work and for that he needed to move beyond the Bray. The opportunity came in 1989 with an offer from Arizona State University to join the faculty of the art department. The move represented both a break from the intense years of education and operational functions and also a chance to explore the next phase of his artistic vision.
The move to Arizona was a liberation for Weiser in several aspects. His teaching position gave him a financial cushion that freed him from the ever-present need to make production pottery he had had at the Bray, and the freedom from operational chores involved in running a business allowed him the gift of time, time to explore ceramics in a way he hadn’t had before. With the money from an NEA grant he was able to construct a studio on the back portion of his property, but the sense of a new beginning in a very different environment left him unwilling to continue the type of work he had been doing. A trip to Thailand helped him find his new direction. He was taken with the pottery but also the lush surroundings and he filled notebooks with drawings of the exotic landscapes he was visiting. When he returned he began making teapots, but teapots that now were canvases covered with black slip and then decorated with scratched- through drawings depicting the desert life at night. The teapots were sent to a show at the Garth Clark Gallery and to Weiser’s surprise, they sold. For the next year he continued making the black and white ware, covered with the drawings that had filled his notebooks and his head over the years, but the black and white palette became confining. The next logical move was to add color and in looking at decorated ware he became interested in china painting. He began experimenting with the china paints, starting with drawings from his trip to Thailand, and from there to memories from his life, even historical and mythological references, all interwoven, hinting at a story without quite telling the whole narrative. The forms themselves began to change as well, to soften and alter as if in response to the story playing out on its surface, the drawings dictating to a large extent the form that would hold them.
The pieces are cast in porcelain, high-fired to make a smooth, tight surface for the paintings. The drawings themselves are done free-hand, arising from whatever inspiration comes to him when he sits down to paint, what Weiser has termed “subconscious bubbling.” The painting process itself is pain-staking, slow and careful work, but unlike glazing it can be wiped off and redone and the color put down is the color that will ultimately result from the firing. The work is solitary and absorbing – Weiser prefers to work at night when distractions are minimal and he can lose himself in the evolving images. Each piece is painted and fired multiple times as the colors fade from the heat of the kiln and require several repaintings to reach their full value. As compelling as the drawings are, the combination of form and decoration is indeed a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Both the forms and the drawings have become more complex. “The ideas and subjects of these paintings on the pots are for the most part just a collection of my own history of fantasy and view of reality. They are built the same way we dream: Around a central idea, a cast of other characters and environments just seem to show up to complete the picture.”3
Among the many awards he has received are a Visual Artist Fellowship from the Montana Arts Council, two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowships, an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Asian Arts Council, the Path of Inspiration Award from Interlochen Arts Academy, and the Aileen Osborn Webb Award. In addition, Arizona State University honored him in 1999 by naming him a Regents Professor and he has also been named a Fellow of the American Craft Council. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions including a mid- career retrospective exhibition Eden Revisited and is part of the collections of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London among many others.
1. Peter Held. “Baby Boom Daydreams: the Early Ceramics of Kurt Weiser,” in Eden Revisited: the Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Art Museum, 2008, 11. 2. “Oral History Interview with Kurt Weiser, May 22 2006,” conducted by Peter Held. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/weiser06.htm 3. Kurt Weiser. “Artist’s Statement” in Eden Revisited: the Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Art Museum, 2008, 40.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY – KURT WEISER
Books and Catalogs
Brown, Claudia, and Robert Mowry. Ancient China Modern Clay. Phoenix, AZ: Phoenix Art Museum, 1994.
Burkett, Richard. Masters – Porcelain: Major Works by Leading Ceramists. New York: Lark Books, 2008.
Clark, Garth. The Artful Teapot. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001.
Clark, Garth, and Oliver Watson. American Potters Today. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1986.
Gunter, Veronika Alice. 500 Figures in Clay. New York: Lark Books, 2004.
Held, Peter, et al. A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.
Held, Peter, and Susan Peterson. Shared Passion: Sara and David Lieberman Collection of Contemporary Ceramics and Crafts. Tempe AZ: Arizona State University Art Museum, 2003.
Leach, Mark. Fired by Imagination: Clay Today. Charlotte, NC: Mint Museum of Art, 1991.
Lewing, Paul. China Paint and Overglaze. Westerville, OH: American Ceramic Society, 2007.
Lynn, Martha Drexler. Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists and Their Work. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1990.
Ostermann, Matthias. The Ceramic Surface. Philadelphia, PA: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Ostermann, Matthias, and David Whiting. The Ceramic Narrative. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Peterson, Susan. Contemporary Ceramics. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000.
Peterson, Susan. The Craft and Art of Clay. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1992.
______. Working with Clay. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998.
Senska, Frances, and Diane Douglas. The Legacy of the Archie Bray Foundation. Bellevue, WA: Bellevue Art Museum, 1993.
Silberman, Robert B. From the Garden: Forms, Images and Ideas. Minneapolis: Northern Clay Center, 2004.
Weiser, Kurt. Kurt Weiser: April 10-May 23, 1999. Montgomery, AL: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1999.
Weiser, Kurt D., and Garth Clark. Kurt Weiser: September 12-October 7, 2000. New York: Garth Clark Gallery, 2000.
Weiser, Kurt D., Peter Held, Ulysses G. Dietz et al. Eden Revisited: the Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Art Museum, Herberger College of the Arts, 2007.
Periodicals
“Artforms Gallery, Detroit; Exhibit.” Craft Horizons 37 (February 1977): 58.
Cooper, Emmanuel. “{Clay in Art International.}” Ceramic Review no. 226 (July/August 2007): 27.
Curd, M. Bryan. “Kurt Weiser: Evolving Vision.” Ceramics (Sydney, Australia) no. 52 (2003): 57-61.
“Eden Revisited: the Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser.” Ceramics Monthly 56 no. 5 (May 2008): 21- 22.
“Eleven Montana Potters.” Studio Potter 8 no. 1 (1979): 33-46.
“Evolution at the Bray.” Ceramics Monthly (June/July/August 1985): 87-89.
Failing, Patricia. “Eden Revisited: the Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser.´ American Craft 68 no. 2 (April/May 2008): 50-51.
Gyung, Choi Eun. “After Finishing Work at the Department of Ceramics of ASU - Kurt Weiser: his Life and Art.” Ceramic Art Monthly (April 2001): 45-47.
Held, Peter. “The Ceramics Research Center at Arizona State University.” Ceramics Technical 17 (2003): 102-105.
Hunt, William. “Bone China.” Studio Potter 26 no. 2 (June 1998): 33-35.
Jensen, Robert. “Architectural Ceramics: Eight Concepts.” American Craft 45 (June/July 1985): 46-51.
Kangas, Matthew. “{Garth Clark Gallery, New York; Exhibit.}” American Ceramics 9 (Spring 1991): 51.
______. “Kurt Weiser.” American Ceramics 2 no. 2 (Spring 1983): 70-71.
______. “Kurt Weiser.” American Ceramics 9 no. 1 (Spring 1991): 51.
“Kurt Weiser.” American Craft 63 no. 5 (October/November 2003): 64.
Landman, Roberta. “Clay Feat.” Phoenix Home and Garden (September 2004): 60-65.
Lauria, Jo. “Dialogues in Clay: a Conversation Between Tony Marsh & Kurt Weiser.” Ceramics (Sydney, Australia) 50 (2002): 8-13.
Leach, Mark Richard. “Kurt Weiser.” American Ceramics 11 no. 1 (1993): 24-33.
Lebow, Edward. “Kurt Weiser: Storied Forms.” American Craft 54 (December 1994/January 1995): 44-47.
Levine, Elaine. “Painting on China.” Ceramics Technical 12 (2001): 14-21.
“Painting on China.” Ceramics Technical no. 12 (2001): 14-21.
Sartorius, Tara Cady. “Eden Revisited.” Arts & Activities 127 issue 1 (February 2000): 26-28.
Senska, Frances. “Pottery in a Brickyard.” American Craft (February/March 1982): 32-35.
Shaner, David. “The Archie Bray Foundation.” Studio Potter 8 no. 2 (1979): 47-51.
“2003 Aileen Osborn Webb Awards.” American Craft 63 (October/November 2003): 58-67.
Weiser, Kurt. “Fire’s Unpredictable Nature.” Studio Potter 11 (June 1983): 42
Video and Other Media
“Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000.” Directed by Elvin Whitesides, Los Angeles, CA, 2000. Video
Weiser, Kurt D., Ted Vogel et al. “2001: Clay Odyssey.” Montana: Archie Bray Foundation, 2001. Video recording
GALLERY REPRESENTATION – KURT WEISER
Garth Clark Gallery, 24 West 57 Street, Suite 305, New York, New York 10019
Frank Lloyd Gallery, 2525 Michigan Avenue, B5b, Santa Monica, CA 90404
WEB SITES – KURT WEISER http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHQvwz2Sx4 Kurt Weiser interview in studio http://helenair.com/articles/2008/06/12/entertainment/top/50yt_080612_weiser.prt Emily Donahoe. “Humble Master.” Article posted June 12 2008. http://www.artdish.com/post/2008/02/Kurt-Weiser-at-the-Bellevue-Arts-Museum.aspx Article on Weiser exhibition http://www.garthclark.com/Artist-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=86&NewID=120 Kurt Weiser on Garth Clark Gallery site http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/weiser06.htm Oral history interview with Kurt Weiser conducted by Peter Held, May 22 2006. http://www.ceramicstoday.com/potw/weiser.htm Article, photos for Weiser http://www.franklloyd.com/dynamic/artist_bio.asp?ArtistID=35 Frank Lloyd Gallery web site for Kurt Weiser http://www.flickr.com/photos/gusstiffpottery/489878024/ Article, photos, and resume for Kurt Weiser http://www.azpbs.org/asuprofessors/index.php Video of Kurt Weiser, Regents’ Professor, Arizona State University http://visitmt.com/Archie/bray.htm State of Montana site with article on Archie Bray Foundation http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/8aa/8aa2.htm Article on “Eden Revisited” exhibition
February 2009