Betty Woodman

Elizabeth Woodman (née Abrahams; May 14, 1930 – January 2, 2018) was an American ceramic artist.

Early life and education Betty Woodman was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, raised by Minnie and Henry Abrahams in Newton, Massachusetts, and studied ceramics at the School for American Craftsmen in Alfred, New York from 1948–1950. Her parents were progressive socialists and her mother promoted a feminist viewpoint. During seventh grade, stifled by the home economics courses to which young women were relegated at the time, she successfully fought her way into a woodshop class, wherein she learned to use a lathe. Betty started pottery classes at age 16 and immediately took to clay. She attended the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in New York from 1948 until 1950.

Career Woodman began her career in the 1950s as a production potter. Her career moved from functional pottery to fresh and exuberant art culminating in a retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006, the first such retrospective for a living, female ceramicist, and a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2016 with the title Theatre of the Domestic. She was a professor of art at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1978 to 1998. Following her daughter's death in 1981, Woodman's work subsequently shifted, evolving from functional pottery to the more abstract, thus transforming her career. Woodman convinced city of Boulder officials in the 1950s to fund the Pottery Lab, making it one of the first recreational pottery programs in the U.S. Her vision was to have students make pottery for fun but also develop their craft into a career. Woodman explored the “vessel” as a metaphor, blurring the lines between craft, sculpture, and painting. Woodman’s work was also influenced by memories of her paintings, landscape, and architecture from her travels. “In 1951, Woodman traveled to Italy for the first time, alone, having worked to save money for the year-long trip. At the invitation of friends, she found her way to Fiesole, outside Florence, and began working in a pottery studio established by painter Giorgio Ferrero and sculptor Lionello Fallacara. It was through these two artists that Woodman first realized that the accepted rules of pottery need not be followed. And it was there that she was introduced to the colorful, folk-oriented traditions of Italian ceramics, which stood in stark contrast to the more restrained approaches predominantly practiced in the United States at the time.” Woodman was inspired by a wide range of influences that included Greek, ancient Etruscan, Japanese ceramics, Italian maiolica, and Roman pottery. During her career she returned to the vase form, repeatedly deconstructing and reconstructing the form in her sculptures. Woodman most often used earthenware clay for ceramic work and vibrant, colorful glazes.

Family Betty Woodman met George Woodman in a pottery class she was teaching in Boston in 1950. They married in 1953. National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1980,1986) Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the Bellagio Study Center, Bellagio, Italy (1995) Fulbright-Hays Scholarship to Florence, Italy (1996) Doctor of Fine Arts Honors Causa from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2006) Doctor of Human Letters Honoris Causa from the University of Colorado Boulder (2007) Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009) International Artist Award (with George Woodman) from Anderson Ranch Arts Center (2010) Gold Medal for Consummate Craftmanship, American Craft Council Awards (2014)

Exhibitions Woodman exhibited at museums and galleries in the US and internationally, including: 'Betty Woodman' at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1996) 'Theaters of Betty Woodman' at the Museu Nacional do Azulejo, Lisbon (2005) and the Musée Ariana, Geneva (2006) 'The Art of Betty Woodman' a retrospective exhibition of her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2006) 'Betty Woodman: Roman Fresco/Pleasures and Places' first exhibited at the American Academy in Rome (2010) 'Betty Woodman: Theatre of the Domestic' at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, 2016

Collections Woodman's work is included in public collections, including: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. Aztec Vase 7 (2007) Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris Museum of Modern Art, New York Whitney Museum of American Art, New York National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA Victoria and Albert Museum, London Minneapolis Institute of Art Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Pillow Pitcher was acquired by SAAM as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign.

Other contributions In the 1991 documentary Thinking Out Loud, Woodman is interviewed by curator and painter John Perreault. In 2006 the monograph, Betty Woodman, was produced in conjunction with her retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it includes curatorial essays by Janet Koplos, Barry Schwabsky, and Arthur Danto.