Frances Senska
Birth Date: March 9, 1914
Death Date: December 25, 2009
Artist Gallery
Frances Senska was born in Batanga, Cameroun, Africa, on March 9, 1914. Her parents were missionaries, her father a station doctor and her mother a schoolteacher. During World War I the family moved back to Iowa City, Iowa, but then returned to Cameroun to continue their missionary work. While initially they lived along the coastal region, they later moved into the hilly interior. As a result, Senska’s upbringing was filled with the rich variety that is West Africa, becoming immersed in the environment and culture and how the people lived in harmony with their environment. Senska’s father had been a cabinetmaker and construction foreman while working his way through medical school, and among the lessons he taught her were not only the use of tools but also his belief that useful things could be made from native materials. These lessons, combined with her exposure to an exhibition of modernist art that she saw in Paris during one of the family’s furloughs, created an interest in art and design. In 1929 the family moved back to Iowa City and Senska, previously home-schooled, began attending the local high school. Following graduation she enrolled in the University of Iowa and began to study industrial design but soon her attention turned to art, primarily sculpture, receiving her B.A. in 1935 and her MA in 1939. Upon graduation she accepted a position at Grinnell College in Iowa, and it was here she developed the teaching style of working closely with her students. World War II saw her teaching position eliminated as universities focused on the war related sciences, and in 1942 Senska joined the U.S. Navy. She spent most of her naval career in San Francisco, and during this time took a class from Edith Heath where she first learned to use the wheel. Senska discovered a real love for the clay and the class gave her a strong foundation in both technique and design. When her tour of duty was over in 1945 she returned to the University of Iowa to get her teacher certification. Because the university did not offer ceramics, Senska transferred to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where she studied with Maija Grotell. That fall, 1946, Senska moved to Bozeman, Montant, and began teaching at Montana State College (now Montana State University). At the university she met Jessie Wilber, a teacher of painting, printmaking and drawing, who had moved to Bozeman from Kansas in 1942. The two became close friends and colleagues who, along with Cyril Conrad and Bob DeWeese, formed the core of Montana State College’s art program for the next 20 years. The summer of 1950 Senska attended a workshop taught by Marguerite Wildenhain which is where she believes she gained much of her wheel technique and other ceramic skills. Senska’s students learned the entire process, digging and mixing clay, hand building and wheel, mixing glazes, etc. Among her students were Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos. It was through her, that Autio and Voulkos met Archie Bray, the brickyard owner in Helena who was thinking of starting a pottery. Senska and Wilber as well as Autio and Voulkos began working on the construction in 1951; in October it was completed and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts was established. The following summer of 1952 Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, and Soetsu Yanagi gave seminars there and Voulkos and Autio became the first resident potters, setting the traditions that continue today, over 50 years later. Senska’s work best “summary” of her life and work is from Brandon Reintjes, curator of the Holter Museum: “Her work directly reflects the qualities of her character: humility, forthrightness, utility, economy of means, joy, an integrated whole, generosity.” It is an enviable legacy. Information compiled by Arizona State University Art Museum.