Negoro

The Jane Hartsook Gallery is pleased to present a collaborative exhibition that seeks to generate fresh perspectives, questions, and engagement with the underrepresented ceramic artist Minnie Negoro (1919–1998). This exhibition brings together, for the first time, new sculpture by Kari Marboe, writing by Sequoia Miller, archival ephemera, and works by Minnie Negoro from the Greenwich House Pottery permanent collection and Mills College Art Museum.

In this exhibition, Marboe and Miller use the historic record to engage with Negoro from their different fields of expertise: Marboe as an artist making response artworks to Negoro’s history, forms, and feminism; and Miller as a studio potter turned art historian writing about her life. Marboe first learned about Negoro while doing research in GHP’s archives during her 2019 residency, and Miller has written about her throughout his career as an art historian. Both were compelled by Negoro’s artistic trajectory—studying at UCLA, being relocated to the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming because of her Japanese heritage, teaching and showing at GHP, showing in MoMA’s famous Good Design exhibition (1950–1951, 1951–1952), and establishing the ceramics program at University of Connecticut. Through this exhibition, Marboe and Miller seek to engage with Negoro through their separate media—clay and writing—to encourage another generation of makers to learn from her work.

Kari Marboe is a Bay Area artist and an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts. Marboe’s work engages communities with each other and with the past by delving into archives and presenting response works in ceramics, photography, and silkscreened clay. Her research-based ceramic works have been presented at Mills College Art Museum (Oakland, CA; 2019), The Museum of Craft and Design (San Francisco, CA; 2017), and Wave Pool Gallery (Cincinnati, OH; 2016). She has been a resident artist at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Newcastle, ME).

Sequoia Miller is a historian, curator, and studio potter. He holds a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University, and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. As a potter, Miller studied at GHP with Michael Simon, Bruce Winn, and Matt Nolen and later joined as faculty from 2011-2012. Miller re-entered academia after more than a decade as a full-time studio potter. His recent curatorial projects include RAW and Ai Weiwei: Unbroken at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Canada where he is currently the Chief Curator & Deputy Director.