Roberto Lugo
Roberto Lugo is a Philadelphia-based artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator, holding a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. Lugo utilizes classical pottery forms in conjunction with portraiture and surface design. The pieces informed his North Philadelphia upbringing and hip-hop culture, highlighting themes of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Lugo’s works utilize traditional European and Asian ceramic techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. Their hand-painted surfaces feature traditional decorative patterns and motifs combined with elements of modern urban graffiti and portraits of individuals whose faces are historically absent on this type of luxury item — people like Sojourner Truth, Dr. Cornel West, and the Notorious BIG, as well as Lugo’s family members and, very often, himself.
www.robertolugostudio.com
Joan Takayama-Ogawa segment
Ceramic artist Joan Takayama-Ogawa is a professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Joan uses her work in clay to respond to the ongoing climate emergency. Segment from SCIENCE episode.
Joseph & Sergio Youngblood Lugo segment
The Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico has been home to a long tradition of Native potters, including brothers Joseph and Sergio Youngblood Lugo. Joseph and Sergio demonstrate the ancestral firing technique that produces their unique polished pottery. Segment from SCIENCE episode.
Santa Clara Pueblo pottery
Joseph & Sergio Youngblood Lugo on Santa Clara Pueblo pottery. Bonus video from SCIENCE episode, streaming on the PBS App November 12, 2024. Premieres on PBS broadcast December 27, 2024.
Images courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration/John K. Hillers photo and King Galleries.
Peter Shire’s art and career
Learn more about Peter Shire‘s art and career. Bonus video from COLLECTORS episode streaming on the PBS App November 12, 2024. PBS broadcast premiere December 27, 2024.
Images courtesy of Peter Shire, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles/Joshua White photo and Charles White photo/JW Pictures, TheClipShop/Pond5, California Institute of the Arts Collection, Zanone.
Joan Takayama-Ogawa’s ceramic history
Artist and teacher Joan Takayama-Ogawa on her mentor, Ralph Bacerra and Joan’s family history in ceramics. Bonus video from SCIENCE episode, streaming on the PBS App November 12, 2024. Premieres on PBS broadcast December 27, 2024.
Images courtesy of Joan Takayama-Ogawa, Cindy Bass, image360 / Shutterstock, Camerique / Alamy, U.S. Office of War Information, National Archives and Records Administration / Clem Albers photo and Fred Clark photo and Francis Leroy Stewart photo and Dorothea Lange photo, Library of Congress / Russell Lee photo, Delphine Hirasuna.
Sustainability at Otis and Joan’s climate change course
Artist and teacher Joan Takayama-Ogawa on her climate change course at Otis College of Art and Design and Otis’ commitment to sustainability. Bonus video from SCIENCE episode, streaming on the PBS App November 12, 2024. Premieres on PBS broadcast December 27, 2024 (check local listings).
Images courtesy of Otis College of Art and Design.
Reading Craft: Architectural Pottery
Authors Daniel Chavkin, Jeffrey Head, and Jo Lauria discuss their contributions to their exhibition catalog, Architectural Pottery: Ceramics for a Modern Landscape, the first book to document the history of the groundbreaking company Architectural Pottery, tracing its critical influence on midcentury design and its enduring appeal today.
In 1950, pioneering entrepreneur Rita Lawrence and her husband, Max, founded Architectural Pottery with design partners John Follis and Rex Goode. The cutting-edge ceramic manufacturer received an immediate and enthusiastic reception. Their strikingly minimal ceramics embodied a shift from the ornamental to the essential; the planters became highly coveted in design circles, and appeared in houses by Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and the historic Case Study Houses. Featured in the first of MoMA’s Good Design exhibitions alongside now-iconic designs by Ray and Charles Eames, Alexander Girard, and George Nelson, Architectural Pottery’s refreshingly clean, exceedingly elegant pots and planters were soon ubiquitous in spaces that epitomized modern living.
This talk is presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Ceramic Art exhibition, Architectural Pottery: Ceramics for a Modern Landscape, on view August 17, 2024–March 2, 2025.
Buy the exhibition catalog
Take advantage of 20% off when using the discount code PHAIDON20
About the Authors
Daniel Chavkin is a photographer, collector, and researcher of all things modernist, and the author of Unseen Midcentury
Desert Modern.
Jeffrey Head is a writer specializing in architecture and design, and is author of several books.
Jo Lauria is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and educator, as well as coauthor of Master of the Midcentury: The
Architecture of William F. Cody, also published by Monacelli.
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Ben Medansky
Ben Medansky (b. 1988) was born in Scottsdale, AZ and received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. His work has been exhibited at The American Museum of Ceramic Art, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Cooler Gallery, The Underground Museum, among other venues. Medansky’s ceramics are included in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles Museum County of Art. He has been reviewed in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, LA Times, among others. He was the recipient of the Maison & Objet Americas Rising Talent in Design Award. Ben has created exclusive work in collaboration with Herman Miller, the legendary Bergdorf Goodman, and world-renowned designer Kelly Wearstler. Medansky has been a visiting lecturer at The American Museum of Ceramic Art, California College of Art, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught at Ox Bow School of Art and was an artist in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. Medansky lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Bernard Leach
Bernard Leach (1887–1979) was a British potter known for revolutionizing studio pottery and the profile of ceramic arts in Britain and the United States. His writing, teaching, and workhad a global impact.
Leach was born in Hong Kong and traveled extensively throughout Asia in his youth. In 1908, he moved to Japan with his first wife, Muriel, where he worked as an artist and teacher. He began to study ceramics after attending a raku pottery party and becoming enamored with the firing process. He spent the next several years developing his style and aesthetic philosophies. In 1919, he met potter Shoji Hamada, and the two became lifelong friends and collaborators. Leach and Hamada, along with the artist Soetsu Yanagi, were the three central figures in the Mingei (Folk Craft) movement. The Mingei approach emphasized the role of traditional techniques and functional necessity in the creative process. Mingei artists sought to imbue their work with timeless beauty, creating pottery which was both utilitarian and elegant.
In 1920, Leach was offered a capital loan by the philanthropist Francis Horne to establish a studio with Hamada in St. Ives, Cornwall, England. Leach Pottery was born, with Leach and Hamada initially producing original stoneware pieces. Their ethos merged Eastern and Western ceramic traditions. Leach Pottery would continue as a modest operation, often plagued by financial difficulty, until the end of the second World War. At that time, Leach’s son David became a partner and implemented a series of successful changes to the business. In 1946, the first set of Leach Standard Ware was released, which would grow to great success. Leach Standard Ware is still hand-made in St. Ives today.
Leach’s approach synthesized functionality, craftsmanship, and artistic expression. He was a proponent of the “Leach Standard:” a level of technical excellence that apprenticing craftsmen were required to meet before their work could be sold under the Leach Pottery name. Throughout his career, Leach taught and mentored numerous potters, contributing to the spread of his ideas and the studio pottery movement globally. He also frequently lectured on his ideas internationally. He believed in the importance of a strong connection between the maker, the material, and the process of creation. His teaching emphasized the value of handmade objects in a rapidly industrializing world. Leach and Hamada are widely regarded as some of the most influential craftsmen of the twentieth century. They both wrote extensively on pottery, aesthetics, and art theory. Leach’s books, including “A Potter’s Book” (1940), are still considered essential reading for aspiring potters.
Header image: Bernard Leach (left) and Shoji Hamada discussing a pot.
