Riviera Magazine, December 2003, pp. 222-223
Art Beat
by Daniella Walsh


Anyone who has walked or driven past the Laguna Art Museum might have noticed, amongst the landscaping, a large ceramic globe from which parts of a face and outreaching hands protrude. This strangely compelling piece somehow brings to mind an extra-terrestrial trying to escape confinement or perhaps being born out of a seedpod. Titled Coming Out #2, it is meant to be a paean to the miracle of birth says its creator, renowned ceramicist Jerry Rothman.

Starting November 2, the Laguna Art Museum, in conjunction with Cal State Fullerton's Grand Central Building in Santa Ana, will present Feat of Clay: Five Decades of Jerry Rothman. It is a 50-year retrospective of Rothman's multi-faceted ceramic works that range from fairly geometric, Bauhaus-inspired vessels to neo-baroque sculptural narratives and near-monumental constructs.

It will be a bi-furcated exhibition, with the Laguna showing his early and mid- career works and the Grand Central, due to its smaller exhibition space, concentrating on later to current works. From all indications, it will re-enforce what those in the know have been saying for decades: In the realm of ceramics, Rothman has been a force to reckon with, an innovator who refused and continues to refuse to accept the limits of his medium, clay, or any constraints on his creativity at all.

For example, his invention of zero-shrink clay (a mix of clay, lignite and fiberglass) and fearless use of "alien" materials such as Styrofoam and stainless steel allowed him unprecedented freedom to make just about anything he wanted. In this, he even surpasses his much-vaunted Otis Art Institute teacher and mentor Peter Voulkos, creator of the monumental übervessels that put ceramics into the realm of fine art.

"I kept changing," he says. "I made figures, landscapes, birds and animals but, as soon as I felt that I had reached an apex, I did something else." Yet, he emphasizes that there are continuous elements in his style and that one could recognize his work anyplace.

The show is a chronological presentation of the artist's creative output and, by extension, his life. He worked in many locations including Nebraska, Idaho and Japan and, of course, Southern California where he first outfitted a gritty loft in downtown Los Angeles as a mega-studio and later built a large craftsman-style residence-studio compound in Laguna Beach.

While he took inspiration from the places he lived and taught at, his numerous innovations made an impact on his students and others hip enough to disregard the increasingly irrelevant divides between fine art and craft. From the 1950's on, when Rothman became, along with other seminal ceramicists Billy Al Bengston, John Mason, Paul Soldner and Ken Price a member of the so-called "Otis Group," he was bent on revolutionizing contemporary ceramics.

The group distinguished itself by treating clay as a sculptural medium. Seeing nearly unlimited possibilities of expression, they incorporated European ceramic styles and techniques, Japanese Mingai influences along with tendencies of American contemporary art such as Abstract Expressionism, assemblage and, in Rothman's case, the founding principles of Constructivism and Bauhaus design. The Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles was the first to show their work.

The show has been curated by LAM curator Tyler Stallings, LAM exhibitions coordinator Dana Solow and guest curators Mike McGee and Susan Peterson. The later have contributed insightful essays for the book accompanying the exhibition. Peterson sheds light on the kaleidoscopic persona of Rothman the artist and the man, including a cogent account of his time in Japan and the stylistic impact it had on both his commercial and more esoteric work. Born 1933 in New York to European Jews, Rothman named himself "Jerry" at age 10. A prodigious art aficionado, the pre-teen scoured the galleries and museums of his native New York and took kid's classes at the Pratt Institute. But, he was also interested in math and science and became, at age 15, a furniture maker's apprentice. Diverse furniture styles captivated his imagination until he went to college and majored in industrial design.

During his two-year stint at the Los Angeles City College he became fascinated by Constructivism and its emphasis on relationships between shapes and colors and their sources. He said that he learned how perception works—how to see. He also took his first ceramic classes at LACC. There, he met Bengston and Price who suggested that he introduce himself to Voulkos at Otis (then the Los Angeles Art Institute.) The rest, as they say, is history. Under the tutelage of the iconoclastic Greek, Rothman became a full-blown ceramicist.

Not surprisingly, Rothman's early vessels possess an earthy, rough-hewn gravity, but that's where any similarity to Voulkos ends. There is nothing derivative in his entire body of work. Offbeat themes and stylistic variants resulting from fearless experimentation evidence that he has been his own man throughout.

"Jerry is difficult to pin down," says McGee, the gallery director at CSUF where Rothman also taught ceramics for 26 years. "He keeps moving between abstraction and figuration, defying labeling all along. By using unconventional methods such as substituting acrylic paints for conventional fired glazes, Rothman kept his techniques immediate and practical and so communicated exactly what he wanted."

During the 1960s and beyond, Rothman's art took a personal and political stance. His take on battle of the sexes and women's lib, environmental issues and the war in Vietnam can be traced in his work of that period. He says that, for example, "Pick a Side," an a-symmetrical juxtaposition of a male and female torso alluded to the vitriolic exchanges about women's emancipation. "People found some of my stuff difficult to deal with," he says. "The nudes, the emotional intensity, the many references to love and birth—even in San Francisco, society was still pretty uptight. They could deal with death but not with sensuality."

His so-called sky pots, as embodied by the Leda and the Swan series, reveal his romantic and mystical bent. Then again, works like Inscape bear testimony to his inventiveness. His use of non-shrinking clay gives him the freedom to layer multiple layers of clay onto an armature or independently.

His latest work is, once again, centered on social commentary. The whimsical appearance of Over the Edge (a surfer is about to crash down from a wave rather than glide into its curl) belies the underlying message that modern society, with its wars and myriad other ills, is headed down a trough.

At age 70, Rothman is still edgy, still inventive and still going strong, even if he did give up the Laguna compound a while back for more convenient digs in Laguna Woods. The opening reception at the Grand Central will feature a band because Rothman's other passion besides making art is dancing. Those who have seen him in action on the dance floor say that he's still someone to watch while doing the Tango.

"There is a rough gentleness in Jerry's work," says Laguna museum director Bolton Colburn. "His work is difficult to classify and yet accessible. I admire the fact that he does not embrace a singular aesthetic, that he has no qualms about doing commercial work along with fine art pieces. He is a real maverick."

Feat of Clay: Five Decades of Jerry Rothman, November 2, 2003-February 29, 2004.