Viola Frey wears clay gloves that she threw on the wheel during an artist-in-residence demonstration at Purdue University in Indiana in 1978.
PHOTO BY MARGE LEVY, COURTESY VIOLA FREY ARCHIVES, ARTISTS' LEGACY FOUNDATION
Viola Frey, the late Bay Area “funk” artist known for creating groundbreaking larger-than-life, colorfully glazed clay sculptures of men and women, is having a moment in Palm Springs — an exhibition at The Pit gallery (Dec. 2 through Jan. 27, 2024) and a conversation at the Palm Springs Art Museum (Jan. 20) with curator Tony Marsh and Cynthia de Bos of the Artists’ Legacy Foundation, co-presenter of the show.
Frey was among the California artists working in the 1950s and ’60s who turned away from traditional, functional ceramics in favor of abstract expressionist and pop qualities that helped shape the West Coast clay movement.
The exhibition features paintings, ceramics, and bronzes, all created between 1975 and 2002, in which Frey depicted hands. “In these works, the mythical ‘artist hand’ is the dominant motif, seen not only in the mark making of the artist through her application of paint and glaze, but in the form and subject matter of the artwork itself,” according to Marsh, founding director of the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at California State University, Long Beach. “The artist’s hand, cast from her own hand creating the work, appears in many of the tondos [plates]. The form also appears in paintings, hovering from above as if on the hands of an omnipotent creator.
During the Jan. 20 conversation, Marsh and de Bos will discuss Frey’s biography, oeuvre, and influence on the ceramic community in California.
The Pit is located at 258 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs.