A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes

Renowned ceramic artist Karen Karnes (1925–2016) has created some of the most iconic pottery of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The body of work she produced in her more than sixty years in the studio is remarkable for its depth, personal voice, and consistent innovation. Many of her pieces defy category, invoking body and landscape, pottery and sculpture, male and female, hand and eye.

Equally compelling are Karnes's experiences in some of the most significant cultural settings of her generation: from the worker-owned cooperative housing of her childhood, to Brooklyn College studying under modernist artist Serge Chermayeff, to North Carolina's avant-garde Black Mountain College, to the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York, which Karnes helped establish as an experiment in integrating art, life, family, and community. Edited by highly regarded studio potter Mark Shapiro, whose work is exhibited internationally, this hardcover volume combines essays by leading critics and scholars with color reproductions of more than sixty of Karnes’ works, providing new perspectives for understanding the achievements of this extraordinary artist.

Hardcover
192 pages
8 4/10 x 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches
©2010

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