Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, December 30, 2021: Kenneth Price, an American artist, ceramist, sculptor (#1457)

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Artist of the Day, December 30, 2021: Kenneth Price, an American artist, ceramist, sculptor (#1457)

Kenneth Price (1935 – 2012) was an American artist who predominantly created ceramic sculpture. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956. He continued his studies at Chouinard Art Institute in 1957 and received an MFA degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1959. Kenneth Price studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos at Otis and was awarded a Tamarind Fellowship.

He is best known for his abstract shapes constructed from fired clay. Typically, they are not glazed, but intricately painted with multiple layers of bright acrylic paint and then sanded down to reveal the colors beneath. Ken Price lived and worked in Venice, California and Taos, New Mexico.

Price was born and raised in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. in 1937 when Price was approximately two years old, his family moved into a trailer on Santa Monica Beach for two years, next to Marion Davies's home, while building a new house in Pacific Palisades. In 1949, Price began at University High School, at which time he took up surfing. In 1952 while at University High, Price received a scholarship to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts), where he took classes in life drawing and cartooning taught by Tee He.

Price's earliest aspirations were to be an artist, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an artist. Even when I was a kid I would make drawings and little books, and cartoons..," he states. Price enrolled in his first art ceramics course at Santa Monica City College in 1954, where he quickly embraced a formal craft tradition as espoused by Marguerite Wildenhain. He subsequently studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956.

As a student at USC, Price spent time visiting the ceramics studio at the Otis Art Institute where ceramic artist Peter Voulkos was teaching. Price has often cited Voulkos as his strongest single influence as a student. After finishing his degree at USC, Price spent a portion of the next year as a graduate student at Otis. There he studied (under Voulkos) with Billy Al Bengston, John Mason, Mike Frimkess, Paul Soldner, Henry Takemoto and Jerry Rothman. Price writes about the group at Otis: "We've been cited as the people who broke away from the crafts hierarchy and substituted so-called 'total freedom!' Actually we were a group of people who were committed to clay as a material and wanted to use it in ways that had something to do with our time and place."

In 1958, Price left Otis for Alfred University (with a six-month detour in the Army Reserves). "I went to Alfred to try and develop some low-fire, brightly colored glazes, but also to try and get away from the influence of Voulkos, which was very strong on me." During his time at Alfred, Price was able to formulate some of the glazes he desired, using a lead base. In 1959, Price returned to Los Angeles having received an MFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

Price's first solo show came at the Ferus Gallery in 1960 where he quickly became part of a developing art movement that included artists such as Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, John Altoon, John McCracken, Robert Irwin and Ed Ruscha, among many others. Price would have three solo shows during the short time Ferus was open, and by the mid-1960s Price was a fixture in the west coast art scene. Aside from six months Price spent in Japan in 1962, Price would remain in Los Angeles until 1970, when he and his wife, Happy, relocated to Taos, New Mexico.

Price's second solo museum exhibition was in 1978 at LACMA, where he presented the project that had consumed him for six years, Happy's Curios (1972–77), named in honor of his wife Happy. This was a room size installation made up of several wood cabinets with open shelves filled with highly colored glazed ceramic pots, plates, bowls, and cups that owed its inspiration to Mexican folk pottery.

In 2001 Price became professor emeritus at USC. In 2002 Price and Happy returned permanently to Taos, where they built a studio attached to their home. In 2007 Price was diagnosed with cancer. After treatments in Los Angeles, he returned to Taos.

In September 2012, Price was the subject of a 50-year retrospective opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and traveling to the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In honor of the artist, the museum has displayed his 2011 piece "Zizi" in the lobby of its Ahmanson Building. “Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective” bears the unique distinction of being the final show the artist helped to plan. During his last two and a half years, before his death in February 2012 at age 77, Price contributed extensively to preparations for the show, which was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and designed by Frank Gehry, the artist's friend since the 1960s.

His work is held in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

© 2021. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Kenneth Price or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only