Ceramics exhibition features gifts from celebrated artist

September 27, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — “The Ceramics of Toshiko Takaezu: Function, Form and Surface” opens Oct. 9 at the Harn Museum of Art featuring 15 recent gifts by the artist, one of America’s most eminent ceramists.

Toshiko Takaezu is not only known for the formal qualities of her work, but also for the expressive quality of their surfaces. She frequently treats the surfaces of her works like paintings and creates dynamic, abstract designs that give the pieces a strong kinetic energy. The calculated tension between form and surface is a fundamental aspect of Takaezu’s work and elevates even her simplest pieces to a high aesthetic level.

Takaezu, a native Hawaiian, first studied ceramics in the 1940s with Claude Horan at the University of Hawaii. An extended trip to Japan in 1955 exposed her to the work of influential potters in that country, and after returning to the United States, Takaezu began a distinguished teaching career that included positions at the University of Wisconsin, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Princeton University. She remains active in her studio and continues to show her work in museums and galleries around the world.

The works in the exhibition were donated to the Harn Museum of Art by Takaezu in memory of her friend, Caroline J. Rister Penn, a Gainesville resident and UF alumnus who passed away in May 2007.
As a Harn volunteer, Penn helped beautify the Cultural Plaza’s water features, transplanting and caring for many rare and hybridized water lilies and lotuses from her own home water garden.

The exhibition will be on view through Jan. 20. For more information about the Harn Museum visit www.harn.ufl.edu or call 352-392-9826.