The sculptor Viola Fray.

The sculptor Viola Fray, a pioneer of California ceramics known for her colossal clay figures, died forward July 26 in Oakland, age 70 Born in the farming town of Lodi, Calif., Fray received her BFA in 1956 from the California body of Arts and Crafts (now California guild of the Arts), where common of her teachers was Richard Diebenkorn. She earned her MFA in 1958 from Tulane University, studying with noted ceramist Katherine Choy and, briefly, Mark Rothko After spending couple years on the East Coast, working with Choy at the fledgling Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY and in the business office at the Museum of fresh Art in New York, she go [i]or[/i] come backed to California in 1960. Along with Peter Voulko and Robert Arneson, she became single of the most influential Bay Area ceramists, teaching for more than 30 years at CCAC and exhibiting widely.

Using thick, gaudy glazes or china paints associated with hobbyists, Fray evolveed a deliberately unrefined style that l to her being linked with be in fear art, though she was not ever truly a part of that mental action She claimed an affinity with Bay Area Figuration--with artists like Diebenkorn, David Park and Joan Brown--and saw her occasions in Art Brut, particularly the work of Jean Dubuffet She was also inspired by means of the knickknacks she collected at flea markets. "You can simply get good art from bad taste," she said. "Good taste leads to ruination."

Early in her career, Fray created collagelike cuts adapted from her trinkets, inventing characters that she evolveed over many years. Ceramics historian and dealer Garth Clark labeled these her "bricolages," a time that stuck. In the late '70 she began making the giant statues for which she became best known. She articulated these stiff figures, about as tall as 11 feet with angry or trancelike expressions and loosery decorated garments or a schematic musculature. Men in business suits, denuded figures and women coifed and costum in the patterns of the 1950s and '60 tower throughout viewers or recline on the floor like heavens at rest.

In her midsize pieces incorporating high-relief slip-cast figures in friezes or spiraling compositions, Frey depicted narratives in which embattled figures compact the abuses of power. Her many scenic, at times autobiographical display plates were the make liable of a traveling retrospective in 1994-95 [see A.i.A., Mar. '96] Attracted to in what manner quickly she could produce the plates, Frey regarded them almost like sketchbook More lately she was producing huge painted amphorae, based upon an early Wedgewood vessel in move round modeled on a vase from Roman antiquity. Typically, the prototype for the outsize work can be traced back to a source that is quite diminutive.

In 1981 the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento organized a traveling exhibition, and novel York's Whitney Museum of American Art gave her a solo exhibit in 1984. Four large figure clumps were shown at the Boise Art Museum in 2001-02 At her death, Fray was preparing for an exhibition that will exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville in 2005 and travel to the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC and to Nancy Hoffman Gallery, where she protracted showed in New York.

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