First he spun the soft wet clay into flat dishes, then bulging pots. Slapping them together, he formed twisting columns and knobby mountains. He hardened and fired them into strong ceramic towers, and suddenly they ceased being pottery and became sculpture.
Peter Voulkos' rough, ragged monuments are powerful weapons against the slick coffee-table pottery that often passes for modern art, and already a generation of fierce West Coast individualists has joined him at the barricades. Their fast-burgeoning "clay movement" dominates a wide-ranging, determinedly original show of California sculpture, organized by the ambitious Oakland Art Museum, now on display in the four-acre garden...
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