Curator Talk – Breaking Ground: Women in California Clay

Sunday, October 9, 2022 • 1–2:30 PM (Pacific) • In Person & Recorded

Join us for a talk in the exhibition galleries with Breaking Ground co-curators Jo Lauria, Edith Garcia, and Beth Ann Gerstein.

Admission to the curator talk and Museum galleries is complimentary with advance registration.

Register for the event using the button below (it may take a moment to load). If you prefer, you may also register by emailing communications@amoca.org.

Reserve Tickets

About the Curators

Jo Lauria is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and educator who received curatorial training at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She is a specialist in the fields of design, craft, and decorative arts, with particular emphasis on objects and environments that define the California lifestyle and culture. Lauria is the organizer of several national touring exhibitions as well as author of numerous publications, including biographies charting the lives and work of contemporary designers and craft artists, and survey books chronicling major movements in the art/craft/design fields. 

Edith Garcia is strongly engaged in the critical research of contemporary art and crafts with curatorial projects, publishing, and creative works that reflect this passion. Garcia received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, her MFA from the California College of the Arts, and a MPhil at the Royal College of Art in London working on research focusing on: The Absence and Presence of the Human Form in Ceramic Sculpture-Where is the Vanishing Point. Her first major publication, Ceramics and the Human Figure, was released worldwide by Bloomsbury.

Beth Ann Gerstein received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.  She has long been a strong and dedicated advocate for the arts, working with communities to promote artists and their work. The Executive Director of the American Museum of Ceramic Art, she currently serves on the Board of Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine and on the Collections Committee of the Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts.  She recently completed six years on the Glass Art Society Board and three years on the Society of North American Goldsmiths’ Lifetime Achievement Award Committee. She has served as a grant panelist, a juror, a lecturer and a teacher throughout the United States.

About the Exhibition

Breaking Ground: Women in California Clay celebrates 44 artists who have defined—and redefined—ceramics over the past 100 years. Many of the Golden State’s most innovative and impactful ceramic artists in the 20th and 21st centuries are women who faced adversity due to gender inequality and were often ignored or overlooked in favor of their male counterparts. These incredibly determined women pushed forward, driven by creativity and tenacity.

This exhibition and catalog are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Humanities, the Pasadena Art Alliance, Boardman Foundation, and The LA County Department of Arts & Culture. The research for this project was supported by a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft.