PETER CALLAS: A Thirty-Year Odyssey

December 2nd – 20th, 2003

The work of Peter Callas – thirty years ago and today – stands bold, independent, and unique. He is a strong presence among the many American artists who have been deeply affected by their experience of Japanese ceramic traditions, but his voice has been always his own. His friendships and associations with Japanese potters have been strong and enduring, mutually inspiring, but never imitative. Many fine Japanese potters have told me that they have learned much about clay from Peter, and even that they have learned from him about their own Japanese ceramic traditions. But most important, they say, is that Peter has shown them how to be “free.” 

Freedom is never easy for an artist – it is elusive for some, overwhelming for others. Though it may be easy to talk about in the abstract, it is tough to grapple with in reality. 

It is part of every artist’s birthright, but it requires a struggle to preserve. It takes courage, and it demands grit. For Japanese potters, creative freedom is especially hard to achieve in an art with traditions as strong and often so rigid and controlling as those of Japanese ceramics. Without freedom, one can certainly be a fine craftsman … and there is nothing at all wrong with that. But without it, an aspiring artist can never reach beyond his craft or give full expression to his own innovative voice or creative vision. 

Freedom does not preclude influence, nor does it mean that an artist cannot learn from other sources. But, instead of being bound to slavish imitation, freedom allows the artist to absorb, digest, integrate, and ultimately to leap beyond his sources and create something dramatically new. This is the creative dynamic that Peter Callas has demonstrated so splendidly. Like any great artist, he has learned from many teachers, his eyes have absorbed and comprehended everything he has seen in life, and his hands have been guided by many masters… . But he has always reached far beyond those sources, transforming them into work that is uniquely his own. 

“Peter…..Can it really be nearly 30 years?” 
I didn’t see Peter Callas’ very first exhibition, but I’ve been watching him and his work with keen attention since the mid-1970s. His work was exciting then, and it has become constantly richer, deeper, more powerful and more exciting ever since. When we first met, Peter had recently returned from one of his earliest trips to Japan. He had just built his first wood-fired kiln, and our conversations were peppered with words like hidasuki, guinomi and anagama. I loved the “Bizen” quality of his work, but it was rougher and wilder – and in some ways more exciting – than my favorite Bizen pieces collected from potters in Japan. Lacking some of their control, perhaps, Peter had somehow substituted a creative vigor and explosive power. 

In the following years and decades, I watched many Japanese potters visit Peter’s kilns, and enjoyed the uncanny experience of seeing his work through their eyes as well as my own. It was impossible to miss their excitement. Peter traveled occasionally to Japan, and once in a while we had the chance to travel there together, visiting kilns and exhibitions, where I could see Japan through his eyes as well as my own. It was fascinating to sense how he was seeing and what he was absorbing as he filtered new inspirations through his own unique intelligence. It was as exciting to see him surrounded by young Japanese pottery students in workshops in Shigaraki as it was to participate in sparking new ideas in conversations with established artists like Issey Miyake and Hiroshi Teshigahara. No matter who or where or what, at every moment in Japan there was a dynamic give-and-take between Peter’s own personal sensibilities and the people and arts he was encountering. 

Observing Peter Callas’ longtime work with Peter Voulkos was no less invigorating – not because it was a classic situation of younger artist learning from a master, but again because it was a mutually inspiring give-and-take between two powerfully creative intelligences. This kind of mutuality is rare. Who “mentored” whom? Voulkos was as stimulated and transformed by Callas as Callas by Voulkos. And their collaboration resulted in an extraordinary body of work from each artist! 

How does Peter Callas come by such vigor and “freedom?” How did he acquire his extraordinary talent for learning from others without sacrificing any of the intensity of his own creative flame? 

Maybe the answers to those questions can be found in Peter’s ancient Greek origins. Like Odysseus (Ulysses) he is a wanderer… a seeker, and a traveler. Obsessed with his quest he always forges onward. Like his fabled Greek ancestor, whose long and terrible journey home from Troy is one of the archetypal myths of human civilization, Peter Callas has also been shaped by every encounter along his own journey as an artist. Some of his experiences enlightened him, others may have left him scarred. But learning from them all, he never lost sight of his goal – which was to find himself and remain true to himself. 

Peter Grilli
President, Japan Society of Boston

Click to see images