Betty Woodman\u2019s first foray into ceramics was a high school pottery class, which set off a career-long relationship with clay, moving from the potential of functional pottery \u2014 \u201cthe cup you drink from\u2026 can change your life!\u201d \u2014\u00a0to the abstracted vessels of her later work.
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\nWoodman studied ceramics at the School for American Craftsman at Alfred University, where she produced a custard cup as her graduating project; it was a post-graduation summer in Italy that would form her idiosyncratic outlook on and approach to making ceramics. She was excited by how frescoes and Etruscan pottery overlapped with and stood among everyday life: how a room could be brought to life by painting scenes over the walls, or how ceramics can be \u201ca marriage of painting and form.\u201d She saw pots depicted in Roman and Egyptian wall paintings, and worlds portrayed on pots; in Woodman\u2019s eyes, \u201cthe vessel is always there, throughout the history of man.\u201d She understood functional pottery as a practice that could idealistically serve society \u2014 what we use and handle in our day-to-day lives impacting our quality of life. But, in addition to embracing pottery\u2019s potential to transform the everyday, Woodman fought for the recognition of ceramics as a legitimate art form through a balance of commitment to and transformation of her medium.
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\nWhile these two impulses \u2014 of embracing tradition and transformation \u2014 may seem to be at odds, they share a motivation for ceramics to be understood. Woodman challenged herself with clay throughout her career, from early tableware collections to winged vases and ceramic mosaic \u201cwallpapers,\u201d where offcuts of vessels are mounted on walls or over painted papers. A 2006 review in The New York Times listed Woodman\u2019s creative output as including: \u201cVessels in the shapes of pillows, bodies (human and animal), flowers and plants; vessels that range in form from Greek to Chinese to Aztec; vessels as baskets, cups, soup tureens and letter holders; vessels inspired by architecture and clothing; vessels that cast ceramic shadows of themselves; vessels that hug a wall or sit on a shelf; ceremonial vessels; even one in the form of an erotic burrito.\u201d
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\nFor all their variety, Woodman\u2019s vessels held an interest in domesticity, and\u2014as with her desire to mould clay into new forms and scenes\u2014she played with the physical setting and historical context of the home itself. It was important for Woodman to move domesticity, ceramics, and women\u2019s labor out of the perceived sphere of hobby-craft without compromising on their artistic integrity. She maintained her material focus while continuing to challenge herself and her audience: \u201cFor me, as an artist, what\u2019s important is not necessarily the piece I made yesterday, it\u2019s the piece I\u2019m going to make tomorrow.\u201d
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\nOne constant throughout Woodman\u2019s life and work was her home in Antella, south of Florence, which allowed her to return to the frescoes and pottery that excited her. The stone farmhouse that she bought with her husband, George Woodman, became a refuge for them – \u201can artist residency for two\u201d- where they would spend a few months each year, experimenting with ideas and techniques, for pottery and domesticity, and enjoying the space of a slower pace of life.
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\nWhile she moved away from making traditional pots, Woodman continued to use the visual vocabulary of vases and vessels as figure, woman, and container. She was interested in how far she could go away from the form of the pot or vessel while still providing \u201can implied function, a central \u2018piece\u2019 holding it together.\u201d In her 2016 exhibition at London\u2019s Institute of Contemporary Art, titled Theatre of the Domestic, Woodman painted a series of backdrops or settings to demarcate \u201crooms\u201d for her painted vessels to sit within. Her work sat on tables in heavily patterned, abstracted domestic spaces \u2014\u00a0where walls extrude 3D forms \u2014\u00a0or stood in front of rooms, where painted clouds filtered in through windows, and vessels took on the wobbling form of their own shadow. \u201cI do like extravagance,\u201d Woodman once said. \u201cI usually err in that directions of too much, rather than too little.\u201d<\/div><\/div> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":606,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}