"AN ARTIST NOT POTTER"- Betty Woodman

Betty Woodman was the subject of a Retrospective in 2006 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This was the Met’s first ever retrospective of a living woman artist. That is pretty shocking, as is the fact that no ceramic artist has been so honoured since. As Woodman always said, when it came to art-world success, the fact that she worked in clay was always a bigger problem to overcome than her gender. She always calls her self an artist not a potter.

At the beginning of her career in the 1950’s, Woodman began as a studio potter after taking a ceramic course and later became a part of the Arts and Crafts movement. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that she began working more conceptually after collaborating with Joyce Kozloff and Cynthia Carlson in the Pattern and Decoration movement, which challenged the hierarchy of Fine arts above Decorative arts. While also being inspired by Feminist art, Woodman began thinking about the domesticity of her practice and how she could challenge and explore the perception of domesticity that comes with her work. The focus of her work remained around the ‘vessel’ as she pushed the boundaries on what she could create with it, she was constantly reinventing and reinterpreting the traditions.

Betty Woodman's artwork always concentrated on things we are all familiar within our houses for example, rugs and vases. This emphasises how Woodman was expressing a new perspective of the simple pleasures we get at home. She was breaking the barrier of what we see as domestic ware and what it means to create what people consider domestic ware.