CHRONOLOGY

left to right: Viola Frey, c. 1958. Photo: Jeff Schlanger; View of the Oakland Avenue backyard, 1980. Photo: Kurt Edward Fishback; Viola Frey, c. 1990-91.

1933

Viola Frey is born on August 15, 1933, in Lodi, California. She is raised on her family’s vineyard and attends Lodi High School, graduating in 1951.

1952-1953

Accepts admission to University of California Berkeley for writing, but then changes her mind at the last minute. She attends Stockton College (later San Joaquin Delta College) in Stockton, California, with an interest in teaching art at the college level.

Senior class portrait, Lodi High Today yearbook, Lodi, California, 1951.

1954

Award winner, The Thirteenth Annual Pacific Coast Ceramic Exhibition, Rotunda Gallery, City of Paris, in San Francisco.

1953-1955

Receives a scholarship to study at California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in Oakland, California. Frey studies painting under Richard Diebenkorn, and takes classes in ceramics under Vernon Coykendall and Charles Fiske.

1955

Receives undergraduate degree in painting, CCAC, Oakland, California.

1957

Moves to Port Chester, New York, to work at the Clay Art Center with founder Katherine Choy. Frey supplements her income by working at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the billing department of the business office.

1960

Moves to the North Beach district in San Francisco, California. Frey gets a job at Macy’s Department Store in the accounting department and continues to work there until 1970.

Coykendall provides studio space at CCAC for Frey, where she works in the mornings before going to her accounting job.

Viola Frey as a student at California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, c. 1954.

1961

Award winner, California Crafts II, Creative Arts League of Sacramento, California.

1963

E.B. Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento (now Crocker Art Museum) is gifted “Noah’s Ark,” stoneware, which marks the first museum to collect Frey artwork.

Award winner, Stone Forms: Association of San Francisco Potters 12th Exhibition, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.

1964

Becomes a part-time Artist Potter in Residence, marking the beginning of her career at CCAC.

Purchase award, San Francisco Art Festival.

Becomes a part-time Teaching Assistant in the Ceramics department, marking the beginning of her career at CCAC.

1965

Purchases a Victorian house at 1335 Divisadero in San Francisco and converts the basement into her first studio.

1967

Becomes a visiting Assistant Professor in Advanced Ceramics for a summer course at Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.

Award winner for painting, James D. Phelan Award, San Francisco.

Viola Frey with her work in the exhibition Ceramics by Viola Frey and Peter Layton at Art Institute of Chicago, 1967.

1968

Award winner, Media ’68, Walnut Creek Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, California.

1970

Artist residency at San Joaquin Delta College (formerly Stockton Delta College) in Stockton, California.

Purchase award, San Francisco Art Festival.

1971

Becomes a full-time assistant professor in Ceramics Department at CCAC.

Award winner, Ceramic Statement 1971, Association of San Francisco Potters, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.

1973

The Noni Eccles Treadwell Ceramic Arts Center opens at CCAC, where Frey is integral in its planning.

1974

Serves as Juror for the 27th Annual Art Festival hosted by the San Francisco Art Commission.

Viola Frey on the Oakland campus of CCAC, c. 1971-1973.

1975

Purchases 663 Oakland Avenue in Oakland, where a sculpture studio is constructed in the backyard and a separate drawing and painting studio is established inside the house.

1976

Casts her first series of bronze sculptures at the Walla Walla Foundry in Walla Walla, Washington.

1978

Artist residency at the CA 5 Ceramic Studio, Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Grant recipient, $7,500 Craftsmen’s Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts.

1979

Panelist for The Ceramics Symposium 1979 at the Institute for Ceramic History, Los Angeles, California.

1980

Panelist for the annual National Council for the Ceramic Arts conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Viola Frey in the backyard of her Oakland home and studio, c. 1980.

1981

Frey’s first solo exhibition and retrospective is launched by the Creative Arts League of Sacramento and travels to multiple venues around the country.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art purchases “Double Grandmother,” ceramic with glazes, which marks Frey’s first major museum purchase.

1982

Panelist for California Sculptural Tradition: Figurative Sculpture at S/12 Twelfth International Sculpture Conference in Oakland, California.

On the set of California Clay in the Rockies in 1983, from top left: Viola Frey, Jerry Rothman, Michael Frimkess, Marilyn Levine, Robert Arneson, Ron Nagle, Philip Cornelius, Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, Richard Shaw, Patterson Sims, Garth Clark, Jeffrey Moore, Bradley Miller. Photo courtesy of Anderson Ranch Arts Center, andersonranch.org.

1983

Rents a 5,000 square foot warehouse and moves her studio. The move provides the space to build taller ceramic sculptures. On kiln-firing days, Frey uses her studio time to draw from live models.

1984

The Whitney Museum of American Art launches a solo exhibition of Frey’s monumental figures, plates, bricolage sculptures, and paintings.

Brochure for solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1984.

1986

Artist residency at Manufacture de Sèvres, in France, with Betty Woodman, Adrian Saxe, and James Caswell.

Featured artist in NCECA 1986 Exhibition, where Frey also gives a clay demonstration and presentation at the Southwest Craft Center in San Antonio, Texas.

Award of Honor for Sculpture, Arts Commission of San Francisco.

Grant recipient, $15,000 Artist Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts.

1989

Panelist for Figurative Art in Public Spaces: An Artists’ Panel Discussion at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Betty Woodman and Viola Frey at Sevres, September 1986. Photo: C du Rusquec for La Revue de la Ceramique et du Verre.

1990

Presenter for La Céramique contemporaine aux États-Unis at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, in France.

1991

Featured artist for glaze demonstration and exhibition at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan.

Artist residency at The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Frey’s silkscreen wallpapers are created.

Award winner, Distinguished Women Artist Award and Exhibition, Fresno Art Museum, California.

Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1992.

1992

Artist residency at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, where Frey’s first glass sculptures are created.

1993

Leads workshop at National College of Art, Craft, and Design in Stockholm, Sweden.

Artist residency at Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum, in ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.

1994

Fellow, American Craft Council.

1996-1997

Frey outgrows her Third Street studio and purchases a 14,000 square foot warehouse on Adeline Street in Oakland.

1997

A series of strokes around this time mark the decline of Frey’s health, and in this year, she is diagnosed and treated for colon cancer.

Viola Frey’s Adeline Street studio, Oakland, CA. Photo: John Wilson White.

1999

Retires from teaching and named Professor Emerita in Ceramics at CCAC.

Receives Founder’s Day Award at CCAC.

2000

Artists’ Legacy Foundation is incorporated by cofounders Squeak Carnwath, Gary Knecht, and Viola Frey.

Receives Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts (CCA, formerly CCAC).

Receives Honorary Life Award, presented by Marvin Lipofsky, at the 34th Annual Conference of National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, in Denver, Colorado.

Solo exhibition at Rena Bransten Gallery, 2003.

2003

Viola Frey Distinguished Visiting Professor Series is established at CCA.

Award winner, Masters of the Medium for Ceramics, James Renwick Alliance, Washington, DC.

2004

Dies in her Oakland home three weeks before her 71st birthday.