Vase by Irene Kolodziej Musick, Stoneware
Artist Statement
Irene Kolodziej Musick (1913-1969) was born in Cleveland, Ohio and studied art at the Cleveland Art Institute, Case Western Reserve University, and Cranbrook Academy. She headed the ceramics department at the University of Missouri-Columbia, taught art in Colorado Springs, and received purchase prizes from New York’s Syracuse Museum of Fine Art and several other museums. Inspired by the work of Bernard Leach and historic Chinese ceramics and glazes, she created her own glaze formulations, experimenting with glaze qualities, clay bodies, decorative techniques, textures, and forms. In a 1964 interview, she said, “I like to explore certain shapes…I certainly do put myself into my work…If the pottery expresses what I’ve had in mind, then I’m happy to let it out into the world.” She took joy in uniting ideas, utilitarian function, and beauty in her work.
Artist Biography
Irene Kolodziej Musick (1913-1969) was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Polish immigrant parents, the eldest of three children. She studied art at the Cleveland Art Institute (where, from the age of 11, she roamed the galleries and sketched the exhibits); Case Western Reserve University; and Cranbrook Academy. There she studied sculpture with Carl Milles and ceramics with Maija Grotell. From the mid-1940s to 1951, she was the head of the Ceramics Department at the University of Missouri (Columbia), where she met her husband, Archie Musick. After they moved to Colorado Springs in 1951, she continued to work in her home studio, throwing pots on manually operated foot-pedal potter’s wheels built by her husband and firing the pieces in a gas-fueled kiln. She encouraged arts involvement in her two children and in her students at the Colorado Springs School for Girls (now CSS), where she taught art 1964 -68.
Professional recognition included numerous purchase prizes: Flint Art Institute, MI; Springfield Art Museum, MO; Crafts Exhibit, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; Annual Exhibit of Artists and Craftsmen, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1947-52; special award, Cleveland Museum of Art (“seldom has a group of such distinction been shown in any Cleveland exhibition,” according to the Museum’s bulletin); Syracuse Museum of Fine Art, NY, leading to her work’s inclusion in an international exhibition that toured Europe and America.
Inspired by the work of Bernard Leach and historic Chinese ceramics and glazes, she created her own glaze formulations, hand-grinding the glaze ingredients in a mortar and pestle, experimenting with translucent/opaque, glossy/matt, crackle, color, texture; and re-creating classic hair’s fur and celadon glazes. Her experimentation extended to clay bodies, sometimes adding obsidian sand or other materials, and to a range of decorative techniques: combinations of glazes with differing behaviors, clay slips in gestural brushstrokes, sgraffito designs abstracted from nature, unglazed textural work, and explorations of form and shape. Inspired by nature, her own vision, and the inherent qualities of clay and glazes, she took joy in uniting usefulness and subtle beauty in her work.
