Executive Director Beth Ann Gerstein invites you to a private reception at AMOCA with collectors, exhibition Curator Jo Lauria, and AMOCA Board and Circle Members to celebrate the opening of Architectural Pottery: Ceramics for a Modern Landscape, a new exhibition exploring the significant impact of mid-twentieth-century architecture and design on artists in California. Also opening tonight is Strut, new ceramic sculpture and photographs by Christina A. West. Following the private reception, a public reception will begin at 4 PM. Opening remarks will take place at 4:30 PM, followed by a book signing.

This event is complimentary for you and a guest.

About Architectural Pottery

In 1945, the Case Study House program was launched by Arts + Architecture magazine. The program commissioned some of architecture’s greatest talents—including Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen—to study, plan, design, and build houses in anticipation of increased demand for housing at the end of WWII. The Los Angeles-based program created 36 prototype homes with published plans for modern residences that could be easily and inexpensively constructed. These mid-century modern homes are characterized by wide open spaces, expansive walls of glass, and flat roofs, with an emphasis on blending the interior with exterior spaces to erase boundaries between nature and the built environment.

In 1949, Lagardo Tackett (1911-1992), a Los Angeles-based ceramic artist and professor, challenged his students with a design assignment: to create forms that would fit the interior and garden spaces of these new modern homes. The students created simple, reﬁned forms to be used as planters and further accentuate indoor and outdoor spaces; they later staged an exhibition at a local nursery. Max and Rita Lawrence, who attended the exhibition, became intrigued with the concept. The Lawrences partnered with two student designers, John Follis and Rex Goode, and founded the Architectural Pottery company in 1950. Within twenty years, the company grew into a vibrant manufactory with a design line of several hundred products, including some of the most enduring forms in mid-century modernism.

Architectural Pottery: Ceramics for a Modern Landscape is curated by Jo Lauria, AMOCA’s Adjunct Curator.

Pictured above: 1961 Architectural Pottery catalog image. Max and Rita Lawrence, Architectural Pottery Records (Collection 1587). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Pictured below: Christina A. West, Strut #2, 2024.

Private Reception - Architectural Pottery & Christina A. West: Strut