Katherine Choy (known as
Choy Po-Yu in China) was born to a wealthy mercantile family in Shanghai, who fled to Hong
Kong after the communist takeover of China. She came to the United States as a
teenager. She attended Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, between 1946 and 1948, then
enrolled at Mills College, Oakland, California. She received both her B.A. and
her M.A. degreees from Mills, which in those post-War years was at the cutting edge of
American academic thought, especially in the growng field of ceramic art. It was at
Mills College that Choy met Henry (Harry) Okamoto, who would remain a close friend for the
rest of her life. A year of post-graduate study at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, brought her the opportunity to work under Maija Grotell,
doyenne of the American ceramics world at that time. In 1952, her burgeoning talent
already evident, Choy was hired as Professor of Ceramics at Newcomb College, part of
Tulane University in New Orleans. Sophie Newcomb College had a great ceramic tradition
dating back to the early 20th century, when its female students produced some of the
finest pottery of the American Arts and Crafts movement.
Choy's interest in glazes and technology while at Newcomb led to a
consulting position at the Good Earth Pottery Corporation, a small commerical pottery in
Port Chester, New York in 1955. Even at this early stage...Katherine Choy began to dream
of a ceramic center in Port Chester. She contacted her friend Henry Okamoto and
asked him to help her purchase the Good Earth Pottery facility and organize the Clay
Art Center.
In the fall of 1957 Choy and Okamoto opened the Clay Art
Center to its first members. The mission of the Clay Art Center was to be a cooperative
studio space, to teach and encourage the development of clay artists, dedicated to the
advanced study of ceramics and sculpture. Ceramic artists Viola Frey and Cleo Bell , were
among those who contributed much time and energy to helping Choy and Okamoto develop the
art center.
Katherine Choy produced an immense body of work --something over
200 pieces--in the first year of her work at the art center. Her production reflects the
homage to Chinese and Japanese pottery that was a key aesthetic in American studio
ceramics in the 1940s and '50s. Choy used classical Asian forms and lush traditional
glazes, decorating her vases with painterly splotches and calligraphic markings. Often the
glazes, especially the copper reds and celadons, were the result of her own research.
Another side of Choy's work also appeared in 1957: large
sculptural vessels, with irregular broken shapes and brushed glaze work. Such radical
innovations in scale and form were just beginning to appear in American studio ceramics in
the 1950s. Today it is most often the men (such as Peter Voulkos and John Mason) who are
remembered for these innovations, but there is no question that Katherine Choy was one of
the first American clay artists, male or female, to make this artistic leap.
In 1958, at the age of 29, Choy died of undiagnosed pneumonia.
In spite of grief and loss of its spiritual leader, the Clay Art Center carried on,
run by Henry Okamoto as a memorial to his friend and colleague. Had her life not
been cut short, she could well have become one of the most important post-War clay artists
in America. Her surviving work gives us insight into the transformations in the studio
ceramics movement in the late 1950s and a glimpse at the promise of a great career
unfulfilled.
From an essay
written by Ulysses Grant Dietz, Curator: Decorative Arts, The Newark Museum, for
the exhibition catalog: Katherine Choy--A Promise Unfulfilled
The Katherine Choy exhibition was on view
at the Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, from
August 30, 2000 through January 7, 20001 |
