Karnes - ""Vessel" Stoneware vessel with 2 holes on the top and painted blue

Karnes - "Vessel" Stoneware vessel with 2 enlongated holes on the top and painted green, blue and brown

Karen Karnes • American (1925-2016)

Vessel (L) C: 1993 • Stoneware 13" x 18" x 14"
Vessel (R) C: 1995 • Stoneware 14" x 10" x 15"

Karen Karnes grew up in the middle of a social experiment. Sometime around 1927, a special purpose home was designed and built by the International Ladies Garment Workers in the middle of New York’s cement mixer of immigrant life,. It was designed to be “just the right kind of house for families of working class people.” There, Karnes grew up in a cooperative colony filled with European culture, May Day parades, and Yiddish studies.

It was an odd part of the American tapestry and set the pattern of her life as she moved from the High School of Art and Music, to Brooklyn College, picking up a husband along the way. Together, they vagabonded from Brooklyn to the Tuscan pottery town of Sesto Fiorentino, then to low-paying residencies at Black Mountain College before becoming founding residents at the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York. It was another social experiment in “integrating art, life, family and community.” McKenzie Smith, a frequent visitor, had an earthier take on the free-wheeling Gate Hill life, recalling a “naked hippieville” with Karen Karnes a “formidable presence among the wildness.”

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All experiments end. Her husband left, but their child stayed. Karen Karnes started over again, crafting a life out of ceramic pots. She was a hit at New York’s Bonniers Gallery where her exceptionally well-crafted tableware and flameproof ceramic casserole dishes were prized. Although spiritually unable to make more than 10 of any one item at a time, she soon catapulted to stardom in the studio pottery movement of the mid-20th Century.

In thrall to famed potters Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, she became a country potter, sharing a Vermont home, studio and life with Ann Stannard a well-known kiln-builder, educator and artist. Together they energized the annual craft show at the Old Church Cultural Center in Demarest, New Jersey, an art school founded by a “band of artists and friends looking to start a community art school.”

In 1998 Karnes’ home, studio and kilns burned to the ground. A band of artists and friends helped Karnes and Stannard rebuild and start again though both were well into their Golden Years. It seems that Karen Karnes life was always about a band of artists and friends looking to start something new.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • (both) Purchased with monies from the Doran Foundation and
In Memory of Edward & Rosa J. Langenbach, 2007.8 (L) and 2007.9 (R)

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“Once asked by a customer how much it would be for 12 of the same pot, she replied: ‘Much more for each since I’ll have no fun doing them.’”

2.
“She was a towering figure in the studio pottery movement of the mid 20th Century. It was a popular movement featuring handmade pottery.”

3.
“Her Vermont home burned to the ground in 1998 and the ceramics community rallied around her providing financial and emotional support to rebuild.”

4.
“She developed flameware casserole dishes in the early 1960s. Production of this iconic item provided a financial foundation for her later studio work.”

Karnes Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1925

Born in New York City to a pair of garment workers who were Russian and Polish immigrants. Shortly after her birth, her parents moved into a cooperative community in a Bronx house built by the International Ladies Garment Workers of America (ILGWA) union. Throughout her life, Karnes respected the ideal of working in small, cooperative communities.

1935

Entered the High School of Music and Art (later renamed LaGuardia Arts) in Manhattan, despite only being in Elementary School. She went to the school on her own and took the entrance exam before telling her parents.

1942

Enrolled in the Art Program at Brooklyn University, just a block from where she lived at the time. Serge Chermayoff, a Chechen born British architect became her mentor in a program that was heavily design oriented in the Bauhaus style. There she met David Weinrib, a sculpture student who took her on her first date. “… and brought me flowers. Yeah it was real college stuff.” They ended up married in 1946.

1948

After husband David Weinrib graduated from Alfred University in upstate New York, the couple settled in Stroudsburg, PA, where David worked as a designer for Design Technics. Karen first started working in ceramics during this time after David brought home lumps of clay. She began by sculpturing bases for lighting fixtures. She was paid $25 for each design by the factory.

1950

Using savings from their work at Design Technics, David and Karen traveled to Italy where David worked at the Richard Ginori factory in Sesto Fiorentino. Karen did freelance design work for the same business using a kick wheel in their apartment and the company’s kilns. She learned to throw clay during a class run by the company.

1952

After a brief fellowhip at Alfred University, where she studied with Charles Harder, Karnes and Weinrib became Artists-In-Residence at Black Mountain College. While there, she coordinated a workshop featuring famed potters, Bernhard Leach and Shoji Hamada. The college began to collapse under financial pressures in 1954.

1954

Along with a group of artists they met at Black Mountain College, Karnes and Weinrib founded Gate Hill, a community of artists and writers in Stony Point, New York. It was a social experiment “integrating art, life, family and community.” Karnes craved more contemplative solitude than the communal set up provided, so demanded a separate studio of her own.

1956

Weinrib and Karnes separated when he left to pursue a fine arts career in Manhattan. She stayed at Gate Hill where she raised their son, Abel, as a single parent. When they first moved to Gate Hill, Karen started selling her tableware through the Bonniers Gallery in New York City. By this time she had become a leading figure in the studio pottery movement popular at that time.

1960

Along with her long-time friend M.C. Richards and student Mikhall Zakin, Karnes developed a flameware clay body for her casserole dishes, allowing them to be directly heated on the stove. Production of these iconic casserole dishes helps finance her other studio work.

1967

Led a workshop at the Penland School, a well-known crafts program in North Carolina. There she was exposed to salt firing for the first time and it became her preferred firing method.

1969

She met Ann Stannard, a British educator and artist, who was leading a kiln-building workshop at the time. Karen and Ann spent time in the UK together before returning to Gate Hill where they settled in and became life partners.

1974

She began curating the Pottery Show and Sale to benefit the Art School at Old Church in Demaret, New Jersey. The school had been founded by her former student, Mikhall Zakin. The show became iconic and brought together a constantly changing cast of skilled potters from around the country. Many young potters saw their career take off after being selected by Karen for inclusion in this show.

1979

Karnes and Stannard sought a quieter life, so left Gate Hill and moved to Morgan, Vermont, where they established a home and studio. Together they built a salt kiln on their property.

1987

She had her first show at the prestigious Garth Clark Gallery on 57th St. in NYC. She had a second show there in 2000 and the gallery staged a retrospective of her work in 2007.

1998

Karen and Ann’s home, studios and kiln were lost in a fire that started in the kiln. She lost all her archives and personal possessions. It took Karen a full year to recover her passion to work, but the emotional and financial support of other potter around the country revived her spirits and they rebuilt their home and lives on the same plot of land.

2005

Karnes was celebrated in a film by Lucy Phenix, titled: Don’t Know, We’ll See: The Work of Karen Karnes.

2010-12

Peter Held curated a retrospective exhibition that traveled the country. An accompanying book, A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes was published in the same year.

2016

She died on July 12 at her home in Morgan, Vermont, a beloved figure among ceramicists worldwide. The Art School at Old Church held a celebration of her art and life on September 17.