| Betty Woodman | ||
| Birth Date: May 14, 1930 |
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| Death Date: January 2, 2018 Artist Gallery |
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| Betty Woodman is internationally recognized as one of the most important ceramic artists working today. Born Elizabeth Abrahams, Woodman became a potter at an early age. She was enamored by the alchemy of glazes – drab when brushed on, but brilliant when fired. After graduating from Alfred University, she was teaching pottery in Boston when she met her future husband, the painter and photographer, George Woodman. She is not a pure potter, in that she violates a number of potting principals. Her slab forms often crack so she repairs them with flattened globs of the same clay, and she glues parts on with epoxy. If she can’t get a glaze she likes, she adds on paint.
Woodman has traveled extensively and finds inspiration in various cultures from around the world. She said, “Things emerge in my studio from a seen image or experience that gets recalled in whatever work I am doing. The work becomes a conduit of the memory of a painting, a landscape, architecture, or some other visual stimulus. Once it starts to manifest itself in my art, the topic and subject then gets further researched in books, visits to museums or by another trip.
The centrality of the vase in my work is certainly a reference to a global perspective on art history and production. The container is a universal symbol – it holds and pours all fluids, stores foods, and contains everything from our final remains to flowers. The vase motif connects what I do to all aspects of art. I can mix the motifs of a classic Greek vase on one side of a triptych with the details of a Japanese print on the other all conveyed with a palette based on the hues of a recollected Hindu temple”.
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