This is the first book on the American sculptor and ceramist Mary
Tuthill Lindheim (1912- 2004) who, with contemporaries Edith Heath,
Peter Voulkos, Marguerite Wildenhain, and others, awakened the art world
and public to the exciting potential of clay as a fine art medium. A
student of Alexander Archipenko, Isamu Noguchi, and Jose de Creeft,
Lindheim entered ceramics in 1946 as a fully formed sculptor. A year
into her new career, she was exhibiting with the best potters of her
generation. A leader in three influential artists organizations the
Association of San Francisco Potters, San Francisco Women Artists, and
Designer-Craftsmen of California Lindheim worked to foster dialogue
among museums, critics, and artists and to break down what she saw as
artificial and destructive distinctions between art and craft. During
her most prolific period in ceramics, 1947-1969, she was featured
prominently in national publications and exhibited in most of the
important ceramics and studio craft shows of the period. Her work is in
the collections of numerous museums, including Arizona State University
Art Museum, the Bolinas Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Mills College Art
Museum, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (Utah State University), and
the Oakland Museum of California, among others.
