KATHERINE CHOY
(American, 1927-1958)

Katherine Choy was one of the first American ceramicists to fuse the clay traditions of Asian pottery with abstract Modern art.  Her talents were recognized upon her arrival in New Orleans and in May 1953, the Delgado Museum of Art (now NOMA) presented an exhibition of 70 pieces of her unique glazed ceramic wares.  Katherine Choy joined the Orleans Gallery in late 1956 and was highly regarded by her peers.  She frequently gifted and sold other artists in the collective her work, as is the case with the piece offered here, which was given by her to Jean Seidenberg, one of the founders of the Orleans Gallery.

The Orleans Gallery opened in April of 1956 at 527 Royal Street in the French Quarter and became the center of the contemporary art world in New Orleans until it closed in early 1973.  Founded by seven artists including Robert Helmer, Shearly Grode, George Dunbar, Lin Emery, Jack Hastings, Jean Seidenberg and James Lamantia, the gallery was run as an artist cooperative, a cutting-edge concept at the time.  The artists were seeking a forum where they could openly share their ideas and exhibit their art based mainly in abstraction and Modernism that was not readily accepted in New Orleans during that period of time.

Born to a wealthy Chinese family in Shanghai, Choy emigrated to the United States when she was 17 years old.  She attended Wesleyan College in GA and then Mills College in CA, ultimately earning an MFA in 1950.  She was awarded a one-year scholarship at the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.  Choy studied under acclaimed ceramicists F. Carlton Ball and Maija Grotell.  In 1952, she was hired to head the famed ceramics department of Newcomb College at Tulane University.  After successful years in New Orleans, Choy left New Orleans in 1957 to found the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY. Unfortunately, she died tragically at the age of 30 from pneumonia the following year.  She was honored with a memorial exhibition at the Orleans Gallery in the fall of 1959. 

Choy was the subject of an exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2022 curated by Mel Buchanan, RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts & Design.  Choy’s work is in the collections of NOMA; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Arts & Design, New York; Newcomb Art Museum; the Newark Museum of Art and the Clay Art Center Collection. 

Choy was exceptionally talented at creating these technically difficult multi-spout asymmetrical forms.  The vase offered here is a very large and accomplished form.  Her work rarely appears on the marketplace and pieces with such an esteemed provenance are especially desirable.  

Reference: 
Buchanan, Mel, Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans, New Orleans Museum of Art, 2002.