By Louana M. Lackey by Louana M

by Louana M. Lackey by Louana M. Lackey

Published by The American Ceramic Society 600 North Cleveland Avenue, Suite 210 Westerville, OH 43082 CeramicArtsDaily.org Published by The American Ceramic Society 600 N. Cleveland Ave., Suite 210 Westerville, OH 43082 USA http://ceramicartsdaily.org © 2002, 2013 by The American Ceramic Society All rights reserved. ISBN: 1-57498-144-7 (Cloth bound) ISBN: 978-1-57498-541-2 (PDF) No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review. Authorization to photocopy for internal or personal use beyond the limits of Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law is granted by The American Ceramic Society, provided that the appropriate fee is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 U.S.A., www.copyright.com. Prior to photocopying items for educational classroom use, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. This consent does not extend to copyright items for general distribution or for advertising or promotional purposes or to republishing items in whole or in part in any work in any format. Requests for special photocopying permission and reprint requests should be directed to Director, Publications, The American Ceramic Society, 600 N. Cleveland Ave., Westerville, Ohio 43082 USA. Every effort has been made to ensure that all the information in this book is accurate. Due to differing conditions, equipment, tools, and individual skills, the publisher cannot be responsible for any injuries, losses, and other damages that may result from the use of the information in this book. Final determination of the suitability of any information, procedure or product for use contemplated by any user, and the manner of that use, is the sole responsibility of the user. This book is intended for informational purposes only. The views, opinions and findings contained in this book are those of the author. The publishers, editors, reviewers and author assume no responsibility or liability for errors or any consequences arising from the use of the information contained herein. Registered names and trademarks, etc., used in this publication, even without specific indication thereof, are not to be considered unprotected by the law. Mention of trade names of commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use by the publishers, editors or authors. Publisher: Charles Spahr, Executive Director, The American Ceramic Society Art Book Program Manager: Bill Jones Editors: Barbara Case and Susan Sliwicki eBook Manager: Steve Hecker Graphic Design: Melissa Bury Photographs appearing in this book are reprinted courtesy of: Christofer Autio, Lar Autio, Rudy Autio, Jaap Borgers, Bill Brown, Dave DonTigny, L.H. Jones, Louana M. Lackey, Hiromu Narita, Joan K. Prior, Bruce S. Rose, Roger Schreiber, and Howard Skaggs. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2002019766 Dedication

To Frederick R. Matson, who introduced me to ceramic studies as an undergraduate, guided me through the pitfalls of graduate school, saw me through to the successful completion of my dissertation, and graciously continues in his role of mentor.

v Contents

Foreword by Peter Voulkos ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiv

Becoming an Artist 1

At the Archie Bray 21

Teaching and Making Art in Missoula 47

An Artist Abroad 79

In the Studio 103

More Time for Art 127

Plates 151

Chronology 247

Appendix 249

Bibliography 255

Index 259 Rudy and Pete, New Jersey, 2000. Foreword

I Know Rudy

eing in Rudy Autio’s presence is to experience the greatness and humbleness we all seek. The time we’ve spent together is extraordinary, to put it mildly. Rudy and I have been friends and colleagues for fifty-five years. Rudy’s vastly diverse talents, enhanced at times by his wife Lela’s remarks, amazed all. From the beginning we had a lot in common; we had clay, music, guitars, art, Montana, immigrant parents, new families, no money, military service, the G.I. Bill, athlete’s foot, and a passion for making stuff. At the Archie Bray we also had the chance to collaborate and build something together. We were the “Kids,” according to Archie. He called what Rudy made “horses and babes,” and what I made “ribs, guts, and belly buttons.” We were a good influence on each other. We had give and take. Rudy is the consummate artist. I am constantly astounded and jealous. He can paint, draw, sculpt, and play the accordion; he’s a real renaissance guy. Our relationship has taught me a world of ideas. I respect Rudy as one of the finest artists and teachers, and hold him as my best friend. —Peter Voulkos

B At the Archie Bray

t the end of Rudy’s first year of graduate school in 1951, he and Lela went back to Montana for the summer. Lela and their baby stayed in Bozeman with Bob and Gennie DeWeese while Lela took classes in lithography at the university. Rudy and Peter Voulkos, who also was back in Montana after his first year of graduate school, went to Helena together hoping to find summer jobs and a place where they could do their work. They found both at the Western Clay Manufacturing

Shoji Hamada decorating a bowl at the Archie Bray, 1952.

A RUDY AUTIO

Company in Helena. The firm’s owner, Archie Bray, hired both of them to work in his brickyard and to help him build a pottery for the art center he wanted to start. Archie Bray was not just a simple maker of brick. He had a degree in ceramic engineering from the Ohio State University, and he played the piano, sponsored concerts and theater productions, and owned a modest art col- lection. Archie dreamed of building a place where artists and musicians could work, and he talked about his idea of an art center with his friends—Branson Stevenson, and Peter and Henry Meloy. All three were enthusiastic about the idea. Stevenson, an oil company executive, was an amateur artist. Peter Meloy and his brother Henry Meloy, were interested in pottery. Pete was an attorney in Helena and an amateur potter. Henry “Hank” Meloy taught Hank Meloy, with his portrait of his brother, Peter, ca. 1951. painting and life drawing at Columbia University in New York City, and returned to Helena in the summers to make pottery with his brother. The Meloys had unsuccessfully tried to build a kiln

22 At the Archie Bray

on their ranch, so Archie had been letting them fire their pots on top of the bricks in his brick kiln. The first phase of the projected art center would be a pottery. The projected center would begin with ceramics. Painting, sculpture, weaving, and possibly, a music conservatory could be added later. A high-school friend of Rudy’s, Kelly Wong, who had also studied art at Bozeman, joined Rudy and Pete in the brickyard. The three worked from early morning until late at night. They shoveled raw clay onto conveyer belts to be crushed and fed into the pugmill; they sometimes would relieve the regular “nippers” to pick up brick as it came from the extruder; at other times, they were assigned to help with the firing. When they weren’t working in the brickyard, they laid brick for the new pottery. They did not labor alone at this; Pete Meloy and many other volunteers helped to build the pottery. Frances Senska (1982:35) reports that “So many eager amateurs laid brick for those walls, it’s a wonder they remain standing. But the experts managed to compensate for the wavering rows, and the roof plate landed on a level course.” By all working together, they managed to construct a building with a showroom, a workroom, and rooms for clay mixing, glazing, and kilns. When the pottery was finished, Archie and Peter Voulkos built a large downdraft kiln for high- fire reduction wares, the first gas-fired kiln in the state. Under Archie’s guidance, Rudy built the twenty-five-foot chimney stack. While they were building the pottery, Rudy, Pete, and Kelly did their own work at night in a corner of the tile-drying shed. Pete made pots on the wheel while Rudy made hand-built sculptures by coiling shapes together. Until the new kilns were built, they fired their work

23 RUDY AUTIO

on top of the brick in the big beehive kilns, just as the Meloys had done earlier. That first summer at the Bray, Rudy and Pete shared a shack with Kelly behind the present pottery building. The following summer, 1952, after Rudy and Peter Voulkos finished graduate school, they returned to the Bray as resident artists. Rudy and Lela bought a small house in Helena, and Pete and Peggy Voulkos moved into an old chicken house behind the pottery. Although Archie paid Rudy and Pete a modest wage, money from the sale of their work was used to help support the pottery. Rudy and Pete and the other resident potters made work for the shop—gift store items such as planters, fruit bowls, and nut dishes—nothing that could be called art. They had barely enough money to live on, and Rudy says he still doesn’t know how Lela made do on his small salary. Lela and Peggy made enameled ashtrays for the shop and taught pottery classes. Lela found some of the customers and students difficult to deal with:

A lot of rich people would come and look at the stuff, but they would never buy anything, Lela Autio, 1952. and that made it difficult. Sometimes the rich people would come and work there and then they’d leave and write letters and ask us to glaze all their stuff and send it on and send us a ten-dollar bill.

24 At the Archie Bray

Rudy and Pete, Helena, Montana, 1953.

Lela continued to do her own work by painting in an attic studio of their little house, and she also painted sets for theater productions. Helena’s active arts community included painting, pottery, music, theater, and even ballet. There were parties with home brew, and guitar music played by Rudy, Pete, Peter Meloy, and the DeWeeses. Poor as they were, Rudy and Lela found Helena an interesting place to live.

Hamada, Leach, and Yanagi That fall, the first of many workshops held at the Bray, and probably the most famous, was given by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, and Soetsu Yanagi. Bernard Leach, who had been born in Hong Kong and had studied in Japan, explained the philosophy of the humble

25 RUDY AUTIO

potter whose roots were in the earth, and who found great satis- faction in the repeated making of pottery objects. Leach had philo- sophical support from Soetsu Yanagi. Yanagi, a visiting lecturer in Zen philosophy at Harvard, dis- cussed the “thusness” of Korean wood turning—just letting it happen—as compared with Japanese Peter Voulkos, Rudy, and Pete Meloy watching Shoji wood turning, which was so pre- Hamada’s demonstration at the Archie Bray, 1952. cise, so exact, and so perfectly done that it lost its spirit. It was all a new experience for the native Montanans. For Rudy, who later confessed that he had some problems with Bernard Leach as a “humble potter,” Yanagi’s lectures on Zen were liberating ideas. He thought Dr. Yanagi was “very interesting, insightful, an aesthetician. He talked about Zen. We had never, ever heard about Zen.” Although Rudy didn’t entirely accept this philosophy, he began to understand the way of thinking that is the essence of Zen. Hamada was a “doer” whose workshop had a pro- found and lasting effect upon Rudy. Watching Hamada work was a great revelation; at this point in his life Rudy really didn’t think much about clay, it was just something you made nut dishes, knick- knacks, and pottery dishes out of. But Rudy was especially impressed when Hamada demonstrated how to throw off the hump.

Shoji could take a lump of clay and throw a whole teapot set off of one lump of clay, and we admired that ancient technique. Most of all, though, I think that I began to discover that pottery making

26 At the Archie Bray

Rudy watching Hamada trim a bowl.

was not just a matter of throwing pots and selling them in the trade world, but from the way he handled things and examined them, turned them around, held them, and communicated with the work that he was doing, I began to sense that there was a kind of a spiritual connection to it, that it was more than just making a pot to make a few bucks on the sale.

To see someone like Hamada working with it was to infuse it with a spirit that was as good as anything that could happen in painting or drawing and fine arts. I could see that in Japanese eyes this was a very important, almost a spiritual kind of experience when they worked with clay. The economy of movement, everything that he did, the way he considered the piece before he painted on it. All of those things had great impact on me.

For a while Rudy even tried to throw like Hamada, and he believes that the experience made a lot of difference in the way he approached working with clay.

27 RUDY AUTIO

Change in Leadership In the winter of 1953, as work continued on the arts center buildings, Archie was injured in the brickyard. Then he developed pneu- monia and other complications. Two weeks later his son, Archie Jr., came to see Rudy in the drying shed where he was pressing clay, and told him “The old man is gone.” Rudy was stunned. For a while, it looked as though the foundation would be buried with Archie. But then, according to Senska and Douglas (1993), “Archie Bray, Jr., who took over the management of the brickyard, kept it up at the insistence of his mother and sister. The brickyard continued to absorb the overhead.” Rudy remembers the relief he felt:

Archie Jr., whom we all felt was against all

this foolishness in the brickyard—pottery,

bohemians, artists, and everything else we

stood for—said he wanted to carry on the

work his dad had started, and told me he

wanted me and Pete to stay as long as we

Archie Bray, 1952. wanted—to carry on the work of the Archie

Bray Foundation. It seemed that we’d just

gotten things going. Things looked pretty

gloomy. As I look back on that day, it’s possible that if Archie

hadn’t died, things may not have continued.

With the future of the Bray assured, other workshops followed that of Hamada, Leach, and Yanagi. Among the visitors were Rex Mason, a potter from San Francisco; Marguerite Wildenhain, also from California, and one of Frances Senska’s teachers, who drew an

28 At the Archie Bray

enormous crowd; and Tony Prieto, who taught at Mills College. There were many others, and Rudy learned from them all. He says that Tony Prieto

was full of hell, and taught me a lot of things about firing and glaze application as well as surface decoration. He communicated ideas about his contact with Artigas, the Spanish potter, and Miró, who was starting to work with clay. Tony would periodically visit them in Spain.

Rudy learned a great deal about high-tem- perature glazes from Carlton Ball who worked at the Bray one summer on a Ford Foundation grant. Rudy thought Carlton was a great guy:

He could throw very well; he taught us a lot of wonderful, simple things about glazes—you can do this, add feldspar to this; a lot of won- Three Musicians, 1952. derful simple things to do with materials. I think 21 in.  14 in.  14 in. I learned from him that there was a sense of experimenting, and trying, and testing and all kinds of things that are importantly related to anyone working in clay. Carlton taught us that. He was very generous with his information, no secretiveness like a lot of potters.

Working on a Bigger Scale Aside from the production work Rudy did for the shop, most of his work at the Bray was sculptural. Examples include Three Musicians and his large, salt-glazed bust, Archie Bray, now installed in Robert Harrison’s Potters’ Shrine on the grounds of the Archie Bray Foundation. The bust was fired in a salt firing on top of the bricks in the brick kiln.

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Rudy also had begun to make small, decorative architectural pieces, such as plaques, that the brickyard gave away with orders for brick. Many of these plaques were designed for fireplaces; others, designed for a kindergarten, were based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Rudy’s plaques with various decorative motifs were shipped all over Montana. He even created a bison skull and recreated Charlie Russell’s signature on a plaque he made for the C.M. Russell Gallery in Great Falls. He remembers, “The bison’s skull was an idea foisted on me by Branson Stevenson. I hated it, but finally made the damned thing.” He had had problems; his clay was full of grog and difficult to work with, and he made about fifteen attempts—pound- ing about fifteen molds—before he finally patched one together. One of Rudy’s earliest large architectural commissions was done in 1953 for the south face of the Liberal Arts Building at the University of Montana. This large, circular, terra cotta medallion has a relief of a Native American writing on a skin. Archie, Jr. asked Rudy to design the medallion using traditional terra cotta techniques. These techniques would serve Rudy well in his later work. First, he created a design showing a Native American intent upon writing. Then he made the medallion in plaster and cast it some nine and a half feet in diameter, to allow for shrinkage to the finished size of eight feet. Then Rudy divided the medallion into twenty-four sections and cast a negative mold of each section. Next, he pounded clay into these press molds. Rudy removed the clay when it was leather-hard by inverting the molds onto plywood bats. Finally, he touched up the sections and smoothed them with a trow- el. Peter Voulkos helped develop colors and glazes for the piece, which is still in place on the university campus at Missoula. Through his work at the brickyard, Rudy developed a technique

30 At the Archie Bray

Medallion, Liberal Arts building, University of Montana, 1953.

that he was to use again and again. He noticed that one method of making decorative brick was to carve fired brick, and he wondered why the technique couldn’t be used with unfired brick. So he removed some of the cutting wires from the brick-cutting machine so that he could make large blocks rather than individual bricks. He used this technique to make a large relief, Sermon on the Mount, ten feet tall and thirty feet wide, which he designed for the First Methodist Church in Great Falls, Montana in 1954. Unfired bricks of

1 clay measuring 3 ⁄2 in. by 8 in. by 9 in. were set on easels that leaned just enough to keep them in place. After carving the blocks,

31 RUDY AUTIO

Sermon on the Mount, 1954. Carved-brick relief, 10 ft.  30 ft., First Methodist Church, Great Falls, Montana.

Rudy stained them by rubbing iron oxide into them and, after they dried, sprayed them with borax to seal the stain. Next the blocks were numbered for placement on the wall, fired in the brick kilns at the brickyard, and installed at the church by brick masons. Christ is portrayed preaching to the multitudes with His arms outstretched, and a self-portrait of the artist can be seen in front. Several of Rudy’s

32 At the Archie Bray

friends also can be seen in the crowd, including Peter Voulkos and

Cyril Conrad, Rudy’s advisor at Bozeman. The carved figures are blocky, echoing the form of the brick, and giving a linear feeling that carried a swinging movement across the thirty-foot wall it covered.

Both Rudy and Peter Voulkos had been experimenting with new techniques, and they each entered work in the Eighth National

Wichita Decorative Arts—Ceramic Exhibition. Rudy’s ceramic

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1 3 Bird and Egg, early 1950s. Stoneware, 13 in.  23 ⁄2 in.  9 ⁄4 in.

sculpture, Bird and Egg, is pictured in Ceramics Monthly on page 19

of its July 1953 issue. Pete took first prize for a brown- and gray-

flecked tureen with wax-resist decoration pictured on the facing

page of the same issue. Pete had made wax resist very popular with

potters at the Bray after Branson Stevenson brought them a new

liquid wax emulsion that made the process very easy. Rudy tried

34 At the Archie Bray

the technique on a few pots, and took full advantage of it in a large repeat motif wall mural he designed for the C.M. Russell Gallery in Great Falls in 1957. The committee rejected Rudy’s original pro-pos- al, a wall of running horses. Rudy then designed a mural sixteen feet tall by thirty feet wide, based on a stone with Native American pic- tographic writing. The pattern on the stone is thought to be a maze meant to confuse evil spirits, to keep them from finding burial grounds in eastern Montana. The overall pattern of this work is a checkerboard with tiles alternating in black and natural terra cotta. He scratched in the line drawing, and inlaid the design in white engobe, using the new wax-resist process. Rudy then fired the hol- low construction tiles to cone one in the brickyard kilns. For Peter Voulkos, the year 1953 was a turning point. His

Mural, 1957. Glazed and unglazed terra cotta, 16 ft.  30 ft. C.M. Russell Gallery, Great Falls, Montana.

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work had begun to change shortly after he returned from giving a three-week summer workshop at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At Black Mountain, Pete “acquired a fresh outlook on art and an attitude toward experimentation that were to release his own adventurous spirit and fierce energies” (Slivka and Tsujimoto 1995: 37). After Black Mountain, he visited New York, and was exposed to the heady atmosphere of Abstract Expressionism. His classical pots of the early fifties were now replaced by large, dramatically shaped and dramatically made forms—forms that were torn, flattened, com- bined, and recombined. He returned to the Bray at the end of the summer but spent only a few more months there. When Pete was offered an opportunity to set up a new ceramics department at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, he and Peggy and their young daughter, Pier, left Helena and the Bray in August 1954. Rudy was kept busy with architectural commissions. In 1955 he designed a large (eighteen feet by thirty feet) carved brick, terra cotta wall relief, Christ and the Disciples, for the Hope Lutheran Church, in Anaconda, Montana. Rudy felt that the project had lost some of its integrity because it was separated by a glass wall. That same year, he made a series of stoneware reliefs, Fourteen Stations of the Cross, for Saint Gabriel’s Catholic Church, in Chinook, Montana. This series of partly glazed, 20 in.-square, stoneware reliefs, shows Christ’s journey to the cross. As part of this commission Rudy also made a relief of the Crucifixion for the central altar area. In 1956, Rudy was asked to create a relief for an exterior wall of the Glacier County Library in Cutbank, Montana. He made a terra cotta relief twelve feet high and four feet wide, partly glazed in

36 At the Archie Bray

white, turquoise, and light blue, along with the natural terra cotta tiles. For the design, Rudy chose animals symbolizing three peri- ods in the history of the lands of the Blackfeet: a bison to symbolize prehistory, a horse for exploration, and an ox for the early settlement of the west. Contours of the hol- low, hand-built sections of the relief follow the curves of the animals’ figures. Rudy was to use this technique to emphasize important lines and curves in his compositions again and again in later reliefs and wall murals. Although Rudy spent most of his time on large commissions or clay sculpture, he continued to make a few pots for sale in the shop. Lela continued to paint at home, but she also was at the Bray much of the time teaching classes and making enameled ware. Interesting people came to the pottery all the time—as students, as residents, to give dem- onstrations and workshops and, of course, to buy its ceramics.

The Montana Historical Society Museum

Except for his architectural commissions, Exterior Wall Relief, 1956. Glazed terra cotta, 12 ft.  4 ft. Glacier County Library, Rudy did not earn very much at the brick- Cutbank, Montana. yard. Fortunately, just when he needed money

37 RUDY AUTIO

for a new car, he found temporary work. The Montana Historical Society, one of the institutions that contributed to the teeming cul- tural activity in Helena, had built a new museum building on the grounds of the State Capitol and had hired K. Ross Toole as its director. Toole was young, energetic, and ambitious. In his first three years at the museum, while finishing his doctoral dissertation in history at U.C.L.A., Toole began to implement his plans for the museum. These included permanent exhibits with dioramas depicting the development of the West. For these Toole needed artists. Peter Meloy, a volunteer director of the museum, was in a position to make recommendations, so he introduced Toole to Rudy. Meeting Toole solved Rudy’s immediate financial crisis, and was to have long-term importance. Toole hired several other artists, including Gardell Christiansen, Robert DeWeese, Shorty Shope, Clarence Zuehlke, and John Weaver. With help from the museum staff, these artists and craftsmen made most of the dioramas in the museum. John Weaver, a sculptor who had studied at the Chicago Art Institute, was the son of “Pop” Weaver, Rudy’s high-school art teacher. Rudy remembers that

Weaver had an uncanny ability to cast plaster into all kinds of unbelievable objects—horses, cars, figures—so he also began to make a series of dioramas based on the oil industry, which donat- ed funds for the making of their series of exhibition cases.

Gardell Christiansen created a dramatic and very popular exhibit of a bison drive that showed bison being driven over a cliff, hanging in mid-air, and falling, as Native American hunters chased them to their deaths. The fact that none of the suspension wires could be seen added to the effect. Christiansen also made, fired, and painted

38 At the Archie Bray

several terra cotta figures at the Bray to use for dioramas of Native American costume and related exhibits. Rudy was assigned the task of making a large Lewis and Clark diorama. Toole wanted him to illustrate the expedition on the day in 1805 when Lewis set out to discover a route to the Pacific while Clark was left behind with a larger group to reconnoiter the head- waters of the Missouri. Rudy was no expert on dioramas.

In fact, I’d never even heard of them. The dioramas he had in mind were exhibits showing bucking broncos, wild buffalo exhibits, scenes from Virginia City—small accurate models of buildings—a kind of childlike fantasyland with exhibits of various kinds. I had no skills along these lines, but I was confident I could model

Lewis and Clark diorama, 1954. Mixed media, 7 ft.  10 ft.  9 ft. Montana State Historical Society Museum, Helena, Montana.

39 RUDY AUTIO

figures. After looking at the painful efforts of some of the artists Ross had hired earlier, I knew it wouldn’t be difficult, so I modeled some sample studies. Ross loved the studies and his staff was joy- ous. Here was an artist who could create the figures they needed.

The historical society did the research for Rudy, who took leave from the Bray for the project. He began by developing the figures from beeswax. They started to take shape at home where he could keep the beeswax warm and malleable on the kitchen stove. For weeks afterward, Lela worked to get the stove burners unclogged. Rudy later switched to petroleum wax, which was easier to model than beeswax and didn’t crystallize or become moldy. He constructed the figures over wire armatures, which made them rigid enough to place into position in the exhibit. In addition to modeling the figures with authentic costumes, Rudy had to paint the diorama, model its landscape, and fill it with figures, canoes, tents, camping gear—the works. He did a great deal of improvising to build ground forms, riv- ers, and canoes, and to find indigenous grasses and colorful material typical of the site on the Beaverhead. Muriel Guest from the Bray and Bob Morgan helped him with some of the basic work. Morgan was a sign painter and exhibits designer who later became a popular wildlife artist. Les Peters, also a wildlife painter who had a good sense of the western landscape, painted the background, successfully merging it with the foreground and the three-dimensional figures. People began to drop by to watch the progress of the work. Once the figures of the Lewis and Clark expedition were finished and painted, they were put into place in the exhibit. When the exhibit was finally finished, it was seven feet high, ten feet wide, and nine feet deep. Rudy describes the scene, which depicted

40 At the Archie Bray

Captain Clark taking a compass reading as he waves farewell to a group of three men in the middle distance. Sergeant York, Clark’s manservant, held a map of the area beside him. Sacagawea, with her papoose on her back, sat cross-legged on the slope near the hunter who was carrying into camp a deer he shot that morning. In the middle distance the party of three—Lewis, Shannon, and Charbonno, with Scanlon, the Labrador dog—were setting out to find the Shoshones. Under a small hummock in the foreground I made a little mouse for my daughter Lisa, who couldn’t see above the sill, being only three years old at the time, but it was for her and the other little kids to look at.

Rudy had been happy working at the museum, but his work was finished. He went back to the Bray where he found that things had not been going well. The new tunnel kiln at the brickyard was a disaster, and Archie Jr. was losing money. He and Rudy had had an understanding that they would split any net profit from the pottery at the end of the year. Rudy’s books showed a profit of $3,000, but the bookkeeper’s records of the pottery’s accounts showed a loss. When the discrepancy was discovered, the bookkeeper was fired. Rudy began to think about moving. His family was always on the edge of financial disaster, and he was desperate. He didn’t know where to turn.

Leaving the Bray Peter Voulkos had urged Rudy to come to California to make architectural ceramics, so Rudy finally wrote to Pete to say he was com- ing. Pete was becoming increasingly well known and successful in California, and Rudy wanted to get in on the good life too. So, one bitterly cold day in the winter of 1956–57, Rudy kissed Lela and his children goodbye, promised to send money as soon as he could, and set off for California in his rickety old truck. He moved in with

41 RUDY AUTIO

Pete and Peggy Voulkos and “tried not to eat too much” while he looked for a job. For Rudy, California was no promised land. He found a part-time job in Whittier setting bricks into kilns at the Advanced Kiln Company for a friend, Mike Kalan. Meanwhile he continued to search for a way to work at his art. He made some designs for stained-glass windows for a synagogue, but they weren’t accepted. He sat in line with many other artists, trying to make connections with architects. He had sample photos of his carved-brick reliefs, and some designers expressed interest, but Rudy couldn’t afford to leave a portfolio. Engineers at a plant in Pasadena interviewed him and offered him a job doing their lab work, but he seemed to be getting farther and farther away from art. Another job prospect was being a foreman in a ceramic plant, supervising the manufacture of electrical parts. Rudy turned it down: “I don’t think I would’ve made a good foreman.” The last straw came one day as Rudy was turning off the freeway exit to Whittier on his way to the Advanced Kiln Company:

A motorcycle cop pulled me over just to inspect my poor old 1941 pickup truck. Everything worked on it, thank God—wipers, brakes—but it was an old truck that didn’t have turn signals. I got a warning to take it to a state traffic inspector for a check. This was the end. I was homesick. I missed my kids. I had no money. I called Ross Toole and asked him for a job at the Historical Society. Ross said, “Come on home.” He wired me a hundred dollars. So I drove home and ended my big California adventure.

Meanwhile back in Helena, Lela was having her own problems:

It was a horrible winter, and all the pipes froze and it was about fifty below, and the kids got chickenpox and measles, and my dad had to come and help us because we were having such a horrible time.

42 At the Archie Bray

Rudy rejoined the museum in Helena as an assistant curator, although the position was only part-time and temporary. Rudy had given the brickyard notice before he went to California, so he decided to work freelance from his own studio, but in cooperation with the brickyard. Archie Jr. agreed to the idea. One of Rudy’s college room- mates at Bozeman, Harold Godtland, who had become an architect, asked him to design a carved-brick relief, Christ Surrounded by Children, for the Gold Hill Lutheran Church in Butte. Working at home, Rudy made a carved plaster model to present to the committee. He envisioned a monumental figure of Christ facing the children as He blessed them, with the figures concentrated into the shape of a cross, and framed by areas of glazed tiles at the corners. It took several weeks and many studies, but he received the commission. Rudy used unfired clay blocks for the project and rubbed iron oxide and rutile stain into them after they were carved in order to highlight the carving. The relief was then partly glazed with borax and fired to cone one in the brick kilns. Rudy thought it was a perfect job technically. The blocks had fired well in the brick kilns at the Bray, and the glaze also had worked well. One of Rudy’s friends from the museum staff, Clarence Zuehlke, went to Butte to help him install the sixteen- by eighteen-foot relief on an exterior wall of the church’s educational wing. The shape fit the space exactly as planned. The Gold Hill relief was Rudy’s last architectural project while he and his family lived in Helena. With no new projects or commissions in sight, Rudy once again began to look for a teaching position for the fall of 1957. Once again, Ross Toole came to the rescue.

43 RUDY AUTIO

Christ Surrounded by Children, 1956. Carved brick, 16 ft.  18 ft., Gold Hill Lutheran Church, Butte, Montana.

44 At the Archie Bray

Carl McFarland, president of the University of Montana, was looking for someone to start a ceramics program, and he asked Ross Toole if he knew a good potter. Toole answered that he knew “the best one in the whole world” (Pietala, I977: A2). Carl McFarland remembered Rudy from his days at the Bray, four years earlier, when he had chosen Rudy’s design for the medallion for the Liberal Arts Building at the university. Now McFarland thought that Rudy could start a ceramics department, teach, and also add ceramic decora- tions to some of the other campus buildings, starting with studies for the Main Hall, and the old science building; later, possibly, he might do some terra cotta murals for the planetarium based on Native American star legends. McFarland offered Rudy the rank of Instructor at Missoula with a starting salary of $550 a month. Rudy accepted, not realizing that the way he had been recruited was extremely irregular: McFarland had circumvented all the written and unwritten rules and rituals of academic hiring practice. Little wonder that the Art Department faculty was cool to Rudy when he arrived, and for a long time afterward.