A wide range of cultures and media inform the vibrantly spectacular ceramics of Betty Woodman. Born Elizabeth Abrahams in Norwalk, Connecticut, Woodman was introduced to pottery while in high school. With the support of her parents and art teacher, she studied ceramics at the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. After graduating, she taught briefly under the auspices of ceramicist Barbara Ladd in Cambridge, Massachusetts; there she met her future husband, painter George Woodman (b. 1932). Married in 1953, the couple eventually moved to New Mexico and then Colorado, where George had accepted a position at the University of Colorado at Boulder. There Betty began selling her pots and developing a city ceramics program that ultimately became the Boulder Potter's Guild.

George Woodman decorated Betty's pieces for some time during her early career, but in the 1960s, while living in Italy during the summers, she worked in the local earthenware tradition and decorated all her pieces by herself. While she retained a strong sense of pottery's origin as utilitarian and functional, she began to experiment with form and context, creating ceramic objects whose forms and appearances refer to and sometimes caricature the art of other times and cultures. Ranging from Etruscan ceramics to Korean wall painting and European modernism, Woodman's distinctive earthenware is perhaps the first studio pottery that can be called Postmodern.

The Currier's Janome Pillow Pitcher is a fine example of one of Woodman's best-known forms. Exuberantly decorated with colorful glazes, paints, and swirling black marks that recall the Fauve paintings of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), the Janome Pillow Pitcher takes the form of an overstuffed pillow from whose center rises a bulbous spout. Serving as a nominal handhold, a wide clay strap connects the back of the spout to the body of the pitcher. Somewhat too large to be used conveniently, the piece possesses an imposing presence that is only slightly countered by its sprightly decoration.

The pillow pitcher, like much of Woodman's work, is made from pieces of clay that have been rolled, cut, and pieced together. Its form is unique to the artist but is influenced by a number of cultural sources. The earthenware from which it is made reflects the traditional wares of the Italian countryside, yet its decorative scheme has roots in modern French painting. The shape of the body recalls certain vessels from ancient Far Eastern cultures, and at least one critic has likened it to a Mongolian nomad's saddlebag. To Western eyes, the most obvious referent is the pillow, a familiar, even banal icon of domestic comfort. In the same spirit of humorous ambiguity, the seemingly exotic word "Janome" is in fact the name of a popular brand of sewing machine. Recasting both the unusual and the ordinary in unexpected ways, Woodman's pillow pitcher is among the freshest pieces of studio pottery in the Currier's collection.

The Janome Pillow Pitcher was purchased by the Currier Museum of Art in 2003.

VSD


REFERENCES

"Betty Woodman: An Interview." Studio Potter 27, no. 1, December 1998, pp. 44-64.

Biographical information contained in artist file, Currier Museum of Art.