Claude Horan creates whimsy with ceramics

By David C. Farmer
Special to The Advertiser

•	Claude Horan Exhibition Koa Gallery Kapi'olani Community College 4303 Diamond Head Road Through April 16 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays Free

Thanks to the vision of Jay Jensen, associate director and chief curator of the Contemporary Museum, and David Behlke, director of the Koa Gallery, we are privileged to see in two very different exhibitions a cross-section of the work that spans more than 50 years of invention.

The Koa Gallery exhibition emphasizes Horan's more playful and sometimes slightly naughty works, consisting of ceramic sculptures, figures and platters executed primarily in glazed stoneware.

Truly Hawai'i's father of ceramics, Horan has influenced a half-century of Hawai'i's artists as founder (in 1947) of the University of Hawai'i's ceramics program and a longtime teacher there. From Lucille Cooper to Harue McVay, Toshiko Takaezu, Henry Takemoto and countless others, Horan's influence has been inestimable.

His protean spontaneity finds best expression in his anthropomorphically manipulated wheel-thrown pots, in which he creates everything from earth goddess fertility figures and Wagnerian-proportioned divas to traditional Hawaiian and Japanese haniwa-inspired clay warriors.

The earliest glazed stoneware work from the late 1950s, "Madonna and Child," only hints at the expressive possibilities inherent in the materials and approach Horan would continue to explore to the present.

Rather stiff and premeditated — perhaps due in part to its subject matter — the large piece does lay out the fundamental strategy: the marriage of the human figure with the traditional vessel form, executed in a spirit of improvisational discovery.

Gradually he works his way to achieving the energetic high-wire act of taking calculated risks while discovering the surprises that are the fruits of exploring the endless possibilities of the clay medium.

It is in the female fertility figures that Horan's wit and passion flame most brightly.

Reminiscent of the Venus of Willendorf, the most famous Paleolithic image of a woman, as well as ancient Cycladic sculptures from Cyprus, the "Tall Standing Female Figures" stoneware series, the tongue-in-cheek "A Case for a Malpractice Suit," and the impressed and glazed stoneware "Standing Pregnant Woman," are all mature pieces done in the 1980s.

Like the earth goddess Gaia, these figures' corpulence traditionally suggests high status in hunter-gatherer societies: Besides her obvious fertility, she is an emblem of security and success.

Horan's work also reminds one of the best of Picasso's endless inventiveness and libido expressed in clay and sculpture.

From breath-form bellies suggestive of fruitfulness and procreation, to the more angular, almost Cubist treatments of faces and breasts, Horan's women are at once totemic and contemporary.

In "Tall Female Figure Singing," done in 1992, and in smaller versions of operatically proportioned figures, Horan combines his love of the fully rounded female figure with a wry wit that insinuates that it ain't over until the fat lady sings.

Of special note in the tall singing figure is the skillful use of flat pastel glazes that bring the diva's costume to marvelously suggested life.

Equally understated color is apparent in the attenuated "Tall Figure," graced with a delicious fleshy pink surface over an energetically executed form, almost like a Rodin-sketched model for a monumental commission.

Horan also explores the male form, primarily in his "Hawaiian Warrior" series and figures suggestive of Japanese circle of clay burial figures and Jomon-era fertility figures.

Both types of pieces summon forth the potent mana of departed ancestors in spirit communication with the living.

Especially in the larger pieces, one senses the sheer physical stamina and strength required to produce large ceramic sculpture. This physicality can best be seen in such pieces as "Tall Bulbous Vessel with Cover," a monumentally scaled work from 1992.

As in all great art, however, this monumentality is not merely a matter of size or confined to the largest pieces. The stoneware with salt glaze series "Warrior" and "Female Warrior, Cubism Period," done just this year, are relatively small pieces that suggest a much larger scale and presence.

Horan's monumentality expresses and embodies real power by projecting a quite palpable physical aura that is not at all symbolic. Horan generates directly a tangible sense of empowerment by the sheer strength and character of his sculptural forms.

Not all of Horan's work in this exhibition is figurative.

The "Large Tree Form Floor Lamp," with its constellation of thrown bowl shapes atop an attenuated column, combines the practical with the aesthetic in an especially pleasing way.

And the 1976 "Damn the Seagulls, It's a Good Thing Cows Don't Fly" — thrown pots smashed against a clay surface while still wet — typifies Horan's masterful technique of the happy accident at the service of his earthy comedic and absurdist sensibility.

A lifelong lover of the ocean and active participant in its energetic physical activities from surfing to sailing, Horan brings to his use of glazes — especially on his impressive large platters — a masterful color application and nuanced use of dark and light that evokes the fluidity of the undersea marine environment.

The 1986 "Zebra Platter" suggests a mythic and resplendent reef fish perhaps of the same name, executed in an abstract expressionist mode worthy of a Franz Kline or a Jackson Pollock.

The Koa Gallery exhibition, which honors Horan as its 11th annual Koa Outstanding Artist and Award Recipient to recognize lifetime achievement in the visual arts, culminates with an honorary dinner on April 13. Call 734-9374 for details.

David C. Farmer wrote The Advertiser's Sunday art column from 1975 to 1976. He holds a BFA in painting and drawing and a master's degree in Asian and Pacific art history.