Biography

Peter Callas was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1951. He graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. In 1974 he was chosen as Artist in Residence by the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. Shortly afterwards, in the same year, he traveled to Japan to expand his horizons by visiting pottery centers, including the six ancient kiln sites. He was deeply impressed by the method of firing with wood fire in a traditional anagama oven, even participating in the construction of one, in Rakusai’s workshop in Shigaraki village. In 1976 he would build an anagama kiln near his home in Piermont, New York and in 1987 another one at his workshop in Belvidere, New Jersey. In this way, Callas, on the one hand, brought a previously unknown method of firing ceramics to the United States, and on the other hand, he contributed decisively to its understanding and dissemination/spreading, by practicing and teaching it. After all, it was Callas the one who introduced Peter Voulkos to anagama in 1979, marking the beginning of a collaboration that only ended with Voulkos’ death in 2002.

His works include large and small scale ceramic sculptures and objects, mainly expressionist, asymmetrical forms, seemingly raw and imperfect, which reflect the aesthetics of wabi-sabi, the ceramic Iga, especially of the Momoyama period, as well as the abstract expressionism. Callas brings emotions and moods with an artistic gesture, leaving color and design to the transformative process of the kiln. In this way he seeks to connect man with nature, but also to highlight the imprint of the elements of nature and the passage of time on the ceramic surface, in a process that refers to the internal process of the earth, as manifested overtime on the substrate and its surface.

His works have been exhibited internationally, including in Japan, China, Korea, Australia, France, Germany and Brazil, while his ceramics are in various museum collections around the world, for example: Sèvres Museum (Paris, France), Yale Art Museum (New Haven, Connecticut), American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, California), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Korea), Museum of Modern Art (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) , International Museum of Ceramics (Kecskemet, Hungary), The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park (Shigaraki, Japan). Callas has taught at art centers and universities, and many artists have studied in his workshop. In 2017 he was elected to the International Academy of Ceramics, while in 2018 he received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant among other awards.

Xenia Giannouli
Art Historian