John mason ceramics artist biography
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Ceramic artist John Mason, who ‘forever changed the landscape for clay,’ dies at 91
John Mason, a California sculptor known for groundbreaking, large-scale, ceramic abstractions, died Sunday at his home in Carlsbad at age 91, said his wife, Vernita Mason.
Mason was known for a quiet, gentle demeanor that belied a grand, djärv and tenacious creative vision that detonated the conventions of ceramic art. He was a huvud figure in a major Southern California shift in the 1950s and ’60s, when ceramics turned away from traditional craft, decorative objects and functionality and moved toward abstraction, monumentality and human emotion.
“John Mason was one of a small group of artists, and that included Peter Voulkos and Ken Price, who made Southern California the epicenter of the clay revolution,” said Suzanne Isken, executive director of the Los Angeles museum Craft Contemporary. “They forever changed the landscape for clay.”
Gallerist Thorsten Albertz, whose New York-based Albertz
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John Mason (1927–2019)
Untitled, 1960
stoneware with glaze
67 x 30 x 13 inches / 170.2 x 76.2 x 33 cm
“I have always had more ideas than I could ever execute in clay, and they continue to come, even today. I realized very early in my experience with clay: Here was an endless story. The challenges and surprises remain constant.” *
A pioneering ceramicist affiliated with the Otis Clay Group and a student of Peter Voulkos, John Mason was born in 1927, in Madrid, Nebraska. When he was a child, his family moved to Nevada, and the color palette and texture of the Nevada desert had an important impact on his work as an adult. At the age of twenty-two, Mason moved to California. He attended the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis) from 1949 to 1952 and the Chouinard Art Institute from 1953 to 1954. In 1955, he returned to Otis, and met Voulkos, who had been hired while he was away. Voulkos, who ra
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John Mason was an American artist who was known for his experimental work with ceramic art and sculptures. John Mason was born on March 30, 1927, in Madrid, Nebraska, and died on January 20, 2019, in Carlsbad, California. Mason’s work focused on exploring the physical properties of clay and its “extreme plasticity”. He created new ceramic art characterized by an increasingly conceptual and geometric nature.
| Artist | John Mason |
| Born | March 30, 1927 – Madrid, Nebraska. Madrid is a village in Perkins County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 231 at the 2010 census. |
| Died | January 20, 2019 – Carlsbad, California. Carlsbad is a coastal city in the North County region of San Diego County, California, United States. |
| Education | Otis Art Institute – Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. And Chouinard Art Institute – Chouinard Art Institute – The Chouinard Art Institute was a professi
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