Viola Frey Ceramics: The Dinner Plates

In the 1960, California artist Viola Frey became associated with a movement known as California funk art, a style with wild color, outrageous imagery and disregard for stablished techniques. Using funk as a foundation, Frey built a mode of expression all her own, which has brought her national acclaim as a ceramic sculptor. The exhibition concentrates on Frey’s plates, which she has used since the late 1960s as a format for uninhabited, visceral images that are painted, molded, sculpted and piled on. The plates on view incorporate a wide variety of psychological and social themes ranging from childhood memories, family dramas, theater of the absurd, to death.