Remembering that Susan took her M.F.A. degree at Alfred University in
1950, she has come full circle in her ceramic career. She has indeed been
fortunate to have such legionnaire ceramists as Leach, Hamada, Rhodes,
Wood, Ball, Martinet and Sperry as close personal friends and be contemporary
and friends with Voulkos, Soldner, Audio, Kaneko, Mason and Takeazu, who
are among the leaders of American ceramics. For more than two decades Susan
focused her career while teaching at Hunter College in New York City, to
writing. She has published books on the Japanese Mingei potter, Shoji Hamada
and American native Indian potters Maria Martinet and Lucy Lewis. Peterson
continues to work uniting world ceramic techniques and world ceramic art
together in The Craft and Art of Clay, with edition 3 coming out soon.
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Susan Peterson's ceramic art, based on the traditional roots of the
'50s and evolving in the '60s to a conservative style with a strong emphasis
on glaze originality and quality, her work radiates the technical merit
and duality of her background and 
reflects
her joy of making well formed and glazed pots. However, she has been able
to influence and teach others in the more futuristic styles of today as
exhibited in the brightly coloured work of her talented daughter, Jan Peterson.
Jan Peterson is furthering her career with this, her first international
exhibition, beginning the cycle that Susan had created years ago. Susan
again has come full cycle with this mother and daughter exhibition, showing
both the zeal and enthusiasm she had when she took her first ceramic class
from Carlton Ball in 1946, and her love and support of family.
One of the foremost ceramic potters and educators today, a graduate
of Mills College, Oakland, California, in 1946 and of New York State College
of Ceramics at Alfred University, 1950, Susan Peterson has exhibited internationally
and been in the centre of the clay world for 50 years. Her long career
includes founding five ceramic departments and curricula: Wichita Art Association
School, Kansas; Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles; University of Southern
California, Los Angeles; Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (ISOMATA),
California; and Hunter College of the City University of New York. A ceramic
professor since 1950, she retired in 1994. On a grant from the United States
Congress in 1980 she founded a program of study and equipped the studios
for the Joe L. Evins Appalachian Centre for Crafts in Tennessee which currently
gives BFA and MS degrees in ceramics and offers many short term and alternative
courses. She has maintained her own ceramic studio first in California,
then New York and now Arizona.
Susan is a member of the International Ceramic Academy, Geneva, a fellow
of the
American Craft Council, a recipient of a National Endowment for The
Arts Grant, The Lifetime Achievement Award from NCECA (National Ceramic
Education Council of
America) and in April, 1998, the prestigious Binn's Award. A Phi Beta
Kappa, she is also a Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland. Since
retiring from Hunter College in New York City, Susan Peterson lives and
works in Carefree Arizona. She is the mother of three artists: Jill Haddick,
professor of Costume Design and Theatre Arts at the University of Portland;
Jan Peterson, ceramic artist and jeweller, and Taag Peterson, sculptor
and builder.
