Celebrating 50 Years
1951-2001

Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration
June 20 - 23, 2001

As the Bray approaches its 50th anniversary, big plans are underway to celebrate. In June of next year, 2001: Clay Odyssey will mark the anniversary. Special exhibitions are scheduled, including a "Teapot Invitational" and "A Ceramic Continuum: 50 Years of the Archie Bray Influence."

Other activities planned are tours of Helena artists' studios, a scholarship benefit auction, presentations and panel discussions. Guided tours of the Bray grounds also will be featured. Chances are food they'll even fire up the oven and serve their famous wood-fired pizza - it's awesome.

Form and Function of the Archie Bray Foundation

Tucked into an unassuming corner of Montana's capital city resides the world renowned Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. Just past Spring Spring Meadow Lake State Park, a short gravel road transports visitors from Helena's mainstream into a magical world of history and art. Located on 26 acres, the site was once home to the Western Clay Manufacturing Company, Archie Bray's brick business. The business went bankrupt in 1960 but not before the establishment of a lasting legacy. Bray, an avid art patron, built the pottery in the spring of 1951. This was the first step in his dream to "make available for all who are seriously interested in the ceramic arts, a fine place to work." Today that dream has been transformed into a reality. Almost half a century later, the long abandoned beehive kilns and fields dotted with piles of brick come to life as artists from around the globe come to work. The Bray has attracted some 200 ceramic artists since its inception. Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio were the founding resident artists and since that time, the Bray has been a premier workplace for leading ceramic artists and educators. Resident slots are limited in number and highly coveted. Thus, the application and selection process is highly competitive. Resident artists don't actually reside on the Bray premises, but have studio space and facilities to make their art.

Around the Yard Visitors are welcome to visit and explore the Bray grounds during daylight .

(Full Schedule of All Events)

Demonstrating Artists

Adrian Arleo, Rudy Autio, Cary Esser, Ken Ferguson, Rebecca Hutchinson, Louis Katz, Matthew Metz, Linda Sikora, Akio Takamori, Peter Voulkos, Kurt Weiser

Presentations & Panel Discussions

• The History of the Bray, Peter Held
• The Impact of the Bray, Garth Clark, moderator;
  Janet Koplos, Patricia Failing, Rick Newby, Chere Juisto
• In the Beginning, Gerry Williams, moderator;
  Peter Voulkos, Rudy Autio, Ken Ferguson

Exhibitions

• A Ceramic Continuum: 50 Years of the Archie Bray Influence
• Archie Bray Foundation Resident Exhibition
• The Work of David Shaner
• Teapot Invitational
• Josh DeWeese, 50 Jars
• And More Ceramic Art Exhibits throughout Helena and Montana (Full List)

Tours of Helena Artist Studios

Irish Flynn, Robert Harrison, Sarah Jaeger, Richard Notkin, Bobby Silverman, Chris Staley, Richard Swanson, Eric Van Eimeren

Free Family Night

Tours of Bray Grounds and Resident Artist Studios

Brickyard Bash

Featuring the Big Sky Mudflaps and Terry Allen

 

Internet: http://archiebray.org

Email: archiebray@archiebray.org

 
The Legacy of the Archie Bray Foundation

It started with three people. The first was Archie Bray, Sr. whose father was manager and later owner of the Western Clay Manufacturing Company in Helena, Montana. He played in the brickyard as a child and worked there before going to Ohio State University for his ceramic engineering degree. When he became the owner in 1931, his intuitive feeling for clay and fire and his technical expertise helped make his brickyard one of the town's major businesses. He loved his work, but he was also a brick maker who played the piano rather well and who brought prominent concert artists to Helena. He was a sponsor of the community theater group and a president of the community concert organization. He bought paintings and prints. He loved artists, and he dreamed of an ideal art center in his brickyard. In the early 1950's, the idea developed and crystallized during discussions with his friends: Peter Meloy, a young lawyer, and Branson Stevenson, a district executive of the Socony-Mobile Oil Company, both of whom were interested in ceramics. The three decided to start the projected art center with a pottery.

The next people to become involved were two students, Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio, both native Montanans who had been away at graduate schools. Back home for the summer of 1951, they were both looking for jobs and studio space for clay work. They visited Meloy, and he took them to see Archie, who hired them on the spot as brickyard laborers. They spent the daytime constructing the new pottery building and nights working on their pots and sculpture in a corner of the tile-drying shed. Their work was fired along with the bricks in the big beehive kilns.

It was Archie's money and everyone's labor. A friend of Pete and Rudy's, Kelly Wong, was also hired to mix mortar, tote brick and work in the garden. He, too, spent nights making pots. And there were the volunteers: Jessie Wilber made special tile for the front wall to symbolize what would be happening in the building, and laid some brick for the wall. Stevenson also made tiles and laid some brick for the walls, as did Meloy and others. In fact, so many eager amateurs laid brick for those walls, it's a wonder they remain standing. But the experts managed to compensate for the wavering rows, and the roof plate landed on a level course. The front wall is a rich pattern of setters from firings of salt-glazed brick. Archie had been saving them for years because their colors were so nice, and now he had an ideal use for them.

During that first summer, the art center grew from a nebulous idea into a neat pottery building with a showroom, a forming room, a clay-mixing and kiln room, a glaze room and the first gas-fired kiln in the state. In late October, Archie's birthday was celebrated with a party dedicating the pottery. The Foundation was incorporated with Archie, Meloy and Stevenson as the first Board of Trustees. Their stated purpose was "to make available for all who are seriously and sincerely interested in any of the branches of the ceramic arts, a fine place to work."

The Foundation offered ten-dollar memberships, which entitled the holder to the privileges of the place for life. The first card went to Bernice Boone, a Helena resident about to retire from the Internal Revenue Service. She had been intrigued by a throwing demonstration that Voulkos had given at Montana Institute of the Arts. Now that the pottery was coming to her town, she decided her talents to the project. She learned how to make charming pots and kept the place tidy. Most importantly, she kept the books and records and provided financial help as well as stability and continuity during the subsequent years.

In the spring of 1952, Voulkos returned with his wife Peggy Cone, a potter and enamelist. At first, their bed was a mattress on the kiln room floor and they ate in the mess hall. But soon the hen house in the back of the pottery was turned into a home for them. Autio and his wife, Lela, a painter, and their small son returned and found a little house in the neighborhood. Archie paid them a modest salary, but proceeds from sales of their work went to support the Foundation.

The first of a long succession of artists who have come to spend a few days or a summer or a few years at The Archie Bray Foundation were Manuel Neri, George McCullough and Doris Strachan. The men were given beds in the bunkhouse and they ate in the mess hall. They had all the space and clay they needed, but they ate in the mess hall. They had all the space and clay they needed, but they also nipped brick, mixed clay, cut weeds and drove trucks. Doris lived at home in Helena. She mixed glazes, poured molds and swept floors in return for access to the clay and to the excitement of the place. Archie was generous, but he also was a canny businessman.

In the fall, Archie brought visiting theater and concert performers out to the brickyard, where Voulkos showed them how to throw pots. Through the publicity this generated, more people became in working there. Stevenson, never shy about following up a good idea, got in touch with the renowned English potter, Bernard Leach, and asked him to stop off in Helena during a tour of the United States he was making with the famous Japanese potter, Shoji Hamada and Soetsu Yanagi, Director of the Museum of Folk-Crafts in Tokyo. This inaugurated a program of workshops by visiting artists. Leach's feisty opinions, Hamada's control of his clay and brushes, Yanagi's philosophy of the relationship of the craftsman to his work were all inspiring to potter's who hadn't given much thought to why they were doing what they were doing.

In February 1953, Archie died of complications following an accident at the brickyard. He was 67. For a while, it looked as though the Foundation might be buried with him, but Archie Bray, Jr., who took over the management of the brickyard, kept it up at the insistence of his mother and sister. The brickyard continued to absorb the overhead, but now the resident artists felt an even stronger pressure to earn their own keep.

People were drawn the Archie Bray Foundation not by money - there were never grants awarded - but by the charisma of the Voulkoses and the Autios, the unlimited clay and the firing facilities. Muriel Guest hitch-hiked down from Winnpeg and pitched in to help. In a short time, her share of the production ware was indistinguishable form Pete''. Peggy and Lela made enameled ashtrays, a popular item. Rudy's ceramic scultures, originally added by Archie by Mrs. Bray, was added to the original structure to house Rudy's progressively larger works. Visiting ceramists, such as F. Carlton Ball and Robert Sperry, stayed for a while to do their own work. Classes were offered to townspeople, to legislators' wives when the legislature was in session, and to out-oftown groups. The crowd at a workshop given by Marguerite Wildenhain in May 1954 filled Rudy's new studio.

But things grew thougher. Voulkos left to establish a ceramics department at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Despite Archie, Jr.'s efforts, problems began to develop with clay quality, and there were disasters in drying and firing. With help from the Small Business Adminsitration, and investment was made in a tunnell kiln. Unfortunately, this was not economically sound in an area where brick was becoming less popular. The threat of bankruptcy chilled the brickyard.

James and Nan McKinnell, who had attended the Wildenhain workshop, decided that the Foundation was, indeed, " a fine place to work" and stayed three years, until 1957. As free-lance potters, they did not receive a salary from the Foundation, and they sold their work independently. But their hard work, along with that of the autios and whatever support Archie Jr. could provide, kept the pottery going, even though the brickyard was slipping.

The Autios left to teach at the University of Montana in Missoula in 1957, and the McKinnells left to run a pottery in Deerfield, Massachusetts. But at their urging, Ken Ferguson, then a graduate student at the New York State College of Ceramic Art at Alfred, was hired to take charge of the pottery. Ferguson came out only to find that the brickyard, which up to this point had allowed the Bray family to support the pottery, was failing, and that the pottery would have to make it on its own or not at all. He was able to put the Foundation on a self-supporting basis through the sale of his own work, teaching classes, and by the sale of raw materials.

After its foreclosure by the Small Business Administration, the brickyard was silent and sad, and the watchman carried a gun. Ironically, the only life left on the property was in the sturdy pottery that people had originally thought of as "Archie's folly." It might have been lonely for Ken, but in 1963, he and his wife, Gertrude were joined by David Shaner and his wife, Ann. Making pots and fighting bureaucracy, Ken and Dave kept the pottery going and, when Ken left to teach at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1964, Dave succeeded him as manager. But no one knew from day to day when they might be turned out and all the equipment sold.

A loyal family of former residents, former board members, former students and other friends had developed over the years. Some ~ like Sue Bovey and Joyce Mackay, who had originally been in the classes for legislators' wives ~ were financially and politically influential in the state. Others who were nationally prominent, like Mike Mansfield and Ray Dockstader, tried to persuade the SBA to let the pottery continue and sell it separately from the brickyard, which was soon to be auctioned off. When Bernice Boone sent out a plea for support, all the friends of the Archie Bray were able to pledge enough money so that, with the help of state businesses and private philanthropists recruited by Shaner, the Foundation bought the pottery, including residences and warehouses.

There was a lot of excitement and high expectations about the Archie Bray now that the pottery was safe. Shaner received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, which he split into $500 segments, just enough to enable several talented young potters to pay for their clay and for firing. Additional grants helped bring Warren MacKenzie, Val Cushing, Daniel Rhodes and others to conduct well-attended workshops.

In 1970, when the Shaners moved to their own place at Bigfork, Montana, Dave and Judy Cornell came from the Penland School of Crafts to take over. Dave was a potter who had also become a glassblower, and he used a Montana Arts Council grant to finance construction of a glass studio in one of the warehouses. Judy shifted from stoneware pots to porcelain sculpture. Dave also encouraged a weaver and a woodworker to set up studios, partly implementing Archie's dream of a broader arts center. Several young potters came to work with the Cornells on a fairly long-term basis, and summer classes brought an influx that speckled the grounds with bright tents. Dave built more kilns ~ including a fine wood-fired one ~ remodeled buildings, expanded the clay business and dreamed of turning the old beehive kilns into a museum.

When the Cornells in their turn moved on in 1976, Kurt and Christy Weiser, both former students of Ken Ferguson at the Kansas City Art Institute, took over. The clay supply business at the Bray had been greatly expanded during Cornell's stay, and had become a full-time job in itself. The following year Chip Clawson was hired to take over the operation of the clay supply business, freeing Kurt to concentrate on running the pottery with enough time to make his own pots. The first priority was studio space ~ or the lack of it.

"Initially, we had about eight resident artists working anywhere it didn't rain," Weiser said. "It really was an exciting time. We always seemed to have about three more people than we could handle, but it always seemed to work out. After a while though, it became apparent that we needed to acquire the brickworks."

Having closed its doors in the early 1960's, the brickworks was sold to a Canadian firm which, until 1984, showed little inclination to sell even a portion to the Foundation. Weiser commented, "By 1984, I couldn't stand it anymore. I approached the owner and said, 'At least sell us a few acres. I'll never bother you again.' This time he didn't say no. Chip, Dave Shaner, Bill Porter (a Board member), and myself sat down with him and offered $50,000. He countered with $100,000. David said split the difference, and he agreed. A bank loan was arranged and within three years the money was raised. A big piece came from private donors in Montana, but lots of money came from people who had worked at the Bray in the past."

With the availability of additional space, new studios were built and the existing ones winterized. The clay business moved into more spacious quarters which, in turn, allowed its production to increase and generate more funds to support the Foundation. There was also a surplus of old brick and additional land which were quickly adapted to fuel the production of more ~ and new kinds of ~ ceramic art. Residents were inspired to explore the possibilities of architectural and site-specific sculpture. Of these, some created highly experimental, temporary works as transient as a summer residency itself, and just as meaningful as a source of artistic inspiration and growth. Some of that sculpture, however, was built to last, to become a permanent part of the Bray's artistic legacy.

In 1985, resident artist Robert Harrison began such a project which would take two full years to realize. Using bricks produced and reclaimed from the brickyard during its hundred-year history, he built a roofless, circular building 25' in diameter and 11' high. Titled, "A Potter's Shrine," its course work was varied to reflect the diverse eras and styles of bricks on site, and it contained architectural niches to hold pottery and sculpture created by resident artists of the past and in the future: a bust of Archie Bray Sr. sculpted by Rudy Autio in the late 1950's, a figurative vessel by then-current resident Akio Takamori, and a changing assortment of pitchers, platters, vases, and figures that would be left by the Bray's evolving constellation of visiting artists over the years to come.

In 1988, Kurt Weiser accepted a faculty position in the art department at Arizona State University in Tempe. His twelve-year leadership of the Bray was clearly a period of aggressive outward expansion in space and facility development, clay production, and the numbers of United States and international artists who enjoyed residencies. But it also brought about inner growth in the recognition of the Foundation's place within the history of American ceramic art. Communications to diverse constituents increased in the initiation of a "Friends of the Foundation" membership and newsletter. Traveling exhibitions were organized featuring work by resident artists. Discussions were initiated about the feasibility of creating a Bray museum and library.

It was left to Carol Roorbach, Weiser's successor and the first woman to serve as a Bray Director, to realize some of these challenges. Under her 3 ½ -year tenure, the organization's first long-range plan was enacted. Fundraising efforts increased through highly successful benefit exhibitions which tapped into the Bray family of former residents throughout the country. Dozens of pieces of art left over the years by residents were gathered together as the first step of organizing the Bray's permanent art collection and placing it in an on-site museum. A temporary location to house the collection as well as a resource library was developed in a former artist's studio. Plans were also established to stabilize the beehive kilns in the original brickyard and build an endowment to support the increasing costs of artists' residencies. To further all of these ends, a new administrative position was added, and Ted Vogel joined the staff as Assistant to the Director.

In March 1993, after Carol Roorbach and her family moved to Snohomish, Washington, The Archie Bray Foundation's current Director was appointed. No stranger to the Bray, Josh DeWeese had served both as a resident artist himself and as Interim Director while the Board of Directors conducted the national search that brought his predecessor to her post. DeWeese's goals for the Bray demonstrate a great respect for its history along with an excitement to move the Foundation forward. His priority, to further the quality of artists' experiences at the Bray, is clear. "As the Bray develops, the crucial issue is to maintain the ambiance, a down-to-earth sensibility so that, above all, it will remain a good place to work. It's what artists are able to accomplish while they are here that makes the Bray great. The Bray offers complete artistic freedom ~ there is not a lot of bureaucracy, no academic pressures ~ but that requires a lot of initiative on the part of the residents who come."

Today, The Archie Bray Foundation seems on surer footing than at any time in its history. It is overseen by a strong Board of Directors that includes artists, former resident directors, representatives of the Helena community, and art professionals from museums and universities. Its programs and staff are expanding as is its international reputation and power to advance the field of contemporary ceramic art. Half of the Bray's funding is provided by its own manufacture of clay, and new programs are being supported through sales of residents' art, growing membership and endowment programs, resident artist fees, and grants and sponsorships.

The Bray's alumni now numbers several hundred. It includes studio potters who sell their work at fairs, festivals and galleries throughout the country. It includes faculty who guide ceramic art programs at many distinguished American colleges and universities. It includes artists whose work is exhibited and collected by museums nationally and world-wide. Virginia Walton, who until her death in 1992, was involved intimately with the Bray for over 40 years and served as its unofficial archivist, commented in 1989, "I think if Archie were to step across the road from wherever he is, he would say, 'This is great. This is what I had in mind.' "

Reminiscing about the construction of his potter's shrine, Robert Harrison recalled, " One day, when I was laying bricks, Rudy Autio stopped by and related the story of how he and Peter Voulkos had laid similar brick to construct the pottery thirty years before. Then Rudy picked up the trowel and laid some bricks on the shrine wall. That meant a lot to me; the connection to history, past to present. It tied it all together and, in essence, blessed the structure."

For anyone visiting The Archie Bray Foundation, Harrison's sculpture stands as a symbol of that historical continuity and grace. It is a living monument that offers each new Bray resident the opportunity to place a piece of his/her own in one of its empty niches. By adding to the potter's shrine, these young artists can see and place themselves within the continuum of those who came before them and thereby extend that continuum one step further. Literally and metaphorically, building the potter's shrine that stands at its geographic heart is akin to building The Archie Bray Foundation, and extending that legacy fuels the continuing vitality of American ceramic art itself.

Frances Senska and Diane Douglas