Bio

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Kirk Mangus (American, 1952-2013)

Kirk Mangus made an early acquaintance with clay. His father, a high school art teacher in Mercer, PA, was interested in ceramics and studied with Toshiko Takeazu at the Cleveland Institute of Arts in night school; Kirk, then in his teens, often accompanied his father to his classes as well as to summer classes at Penland School of Crafts. When he entered Rhode Island School of Design, however, it was to major in sculpture or painting, not ceramics. Following his freshman year he was awarded a scholarship to Penland and, as no classes in sculpture were offered, took ceramic classes instead. Among his instructors were Don Reitz, Byron Temple, Mary Law, and Warren Mackenzie, and when he returned to RISD in the fall, he changed his major to ceramics. It was a time of great creativity in ceramic art and Mangus’s teachers encouraged him to experiment both in technique and imagery. Because Mangus loved to draw, he began drawing on his pots, and those early experimentations have continued to evolve in his work. After earning his B.F.A. in 1975, Mangus began working at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia, moving there primarily because fellow student and ceramic artist Eva Kwong had gone there to study at the Tyler School of Art. They were married in 1976, and that summer the couple attended a wood firing workshop at the Earth, Air, Fire and Water Program in California. Mangus was impressed not only with the wood firing process but also by the emphasis placed on using local clays. “By digging the earth I realized that the pots had a sense of that place, who was making them, the time and the materials,” he said, 1 beliefs he continues to hold. Later, in 1980, they would spend a summer living in Mangus’s home town of Mercer, where they rebuilt a kiln to use for salt firing at his parents’ home.

Kwong encouraged Mangus to apply to graduate school, and in 1977 they moved to Pullman, WA, where he entered Washington State University, studying with Pat Filer who also liked to draw on pots. Mangus earned his M.F.A. in 1979, and for the next several years worked in various positions: instructor at Spokane Falls Community College, Resident Artist at the Archie Bray Foundation, an internship with Katseyuki Sakezumi to learn about wood kilns, and a number of guest artist positions including Cleveland Institute of Art, Alfred University, and Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 1985 he accepted a faculty position at Kent State University in Kent, OH, and remains there as Professor of Art.

Mangus uses a variety of clay bodies but prefers those that are locally available. He also uses a number of forming methods, among them throwing, pinching and coiling and what he calls the “coil and throw” which involves joining a coil to a base and then throwing it, repeating the process until the piece is the size he wants. In addition he often uses press molds, many of which incorporate the images he likes to use in the mold itself. Imagery is very important to Mangus and the deep, multi-layered carvings on his pieces carry reminders of ancient pottery. Finishes range from none at all to thin glazes to thick lusters. Some of the pieces are fired in a wood-fired kiln built into the side of a hill on his parents’ farm in Pennsylvania. Mangus controls the results he is looking for by varying the length of the firing and the position of the ware in the kiln. He also fires in salt, gas, and electric kilns. His fascination with all things clay stems from his sheer love of the medium. “The bottom line is pottery. I love finished pottery; seeing ware boards full. I love working on the wheel; I am pretty much a mud and water man. Firing is interesting and I have made the range – wood, salt, electric, gas – every temperature I could come up with. But it is the finished object that holds the greatest weight.” 

Mangus works fast and with great energy and his approach is reflected in his pieces. His finished pieces are rough, the images apparently randomly applied, but in fact the entire process is a conscious one. “I want my pots to not be something that sits back but to reach out and grab you,” Mangus says, and sees his work as being about “movement and leaving an object frozen in motion.”3 The images, too, are crudely drawn, but consciously so, raw and rough like the raw and rough creatures – both human and non-human – that they represent. Fired in the wood kiln they take on a timeless appearance further emphasizing the universal connection of all things, the presence of the past in the here and now. “For every mark that I’ve laid down, I’ve met all those people, and I think about the grocery store and the disco. Then ash flies through the kiln and lands on the pot and makes it look a million years old, even though it’s this highly contemporary thing sitting there on the table staring back at you.”4 Through his work Mangus reflects on the human condition, the cycle of life and death and the acceptance of mortality - the knowledge of the tragedy of existence tempered by the eternal link between everything that has been and everything that is.

Mangus has received a number of awards for his work. Among them are a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, Ohio Arts Council Fellowships (multiple), McKnight Fellowship Residency at the Northern Clay Center, and National Council on the Education of Ceramics Art International Residency Award. He has been a visiting artist and given many workshops both nationally and internationally, and his work is included in collections worldwide.

 

Education

1979 MFA University Washington, Pullman

1975 BFA Rhode Island School of Design

Grants, Awards, Honors

2006

  • National Council on the Education of Ceramic Arts International Residency Award to The Pottery Workshop,Shanghai and Experimental Sculpture Factory, Jingdezhen, China
  • National Endowment for the Arts,Challenge America: Reaching Every Community Fast Track Review Grant, Summit County Youth Employment for Success for The Mural Project, Akron, OH. (Primary Artist)

2005

  • NCECA Purchase Award for their Permanent Collection, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Erie, CO. The 2005 Clay National Exhibition.
  • University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD.

2003

1999

1996

1993

  • Invited Artist, "Jinro International Ceramic Workshop", Seoul, Korea
  • Invited Artist and Lecture, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan

1987

1984

1982