Peter callas biography

Peter Callas is an acclaimed ceramic artist known for his pioneering work in wood-fired ceramics and his innovative approaches to glaze and form. Callas’ work is characterized by his mastery of the anagama kiln, a traditional Japanese wood-fired kiln, which he uses to create dynamic, textured surfaces on his ceramic pieces. His pieces often feature organic forms and complex, vibrant glazes that result from the unique firing process.

Background and Career

• Early Life and Education: Peter Callas was born in 1951 and developed an interest in ceramics early in his life. He studied at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, where he initially majored in art.
• Influence and Techniques: Callas is heavily influenced by Japanese pottery, particularly the aesthetics and techniques of traditional Japanese wood-fired ceramics. His work often reflects the wabi-sabi philosophy, which appreciates beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
• Wood-Firing: The anagama kiln plays a central role in Callas’ work. This type of kiln allows for long, slow firings that can last several days, enabling the ash from the wood to settle on the ceramics and create natural ash glazes. This process results in unique, one-of-a-kind surfaces that are integral to the appeal of his pieces.
• Collaborations: Callas has collaborated with several notable artists, including the renowned Japanese-American ceramic artist Peter Voulkos. These collaborations have enriched his work and contributed to his standing in the ceramics community.
• Exhibitions and Recognition: Callas has exhibited his work internationally and has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to the field of ceramics. His pieces are held in various prestigious collections, including museums and private collections worldwide.

Artistic Philosophy

Peter Callas’ work is deeply rooted in the natural world and the unpredictability of the wood-firing process. He e

Peter Callas

Biography

Vibrant and dynamic, the video works of Australian artist Peter Callas are singular in form, technology and iconography. In tapes, installations and laserdisc works, Callas constructs extraordinary landscapes of animated signs and emblems. These vivid and witty pictorial tableaux portray the popular, historical and media images embedded within the construction of cultural identity and collective memory.

Callas' iconic, cartoon-like images, derived from the technological and popular cultures of Japan, Australia, and the United States, are reconfigured as an intricate, highly condensed visual language. Electronically re-drawn and layered, they collide in an associative "architectronics of meaning."

In 1985 Callas began working almost exclusively with computer graphics, particularly the Fairlight CVI, which he interfaced with digital effects and hand-drawn images and patterns to form his unique "multi-layered idea landscapes." Referencing cinema, TV and techno-pop culture, these colorful, graphic proliferations of images — set in rhythmic motion to equally propulsive soundtracks — are powerful visual texts. Depicting television as a stream of electronic fireworks, video as a psychological space, and technology as a dimensionless terrain, Callas transforms the contextual significance of popular signs to create a bold, ideogrammatic language from the icons of cultural representation.

Callas was born in 1952 in Sydney, Australia. He received a B.A. from the University of Sydney. The recipient of a grant from the Australian Film Commission and a fellowship from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, he has taught at Sydney College of the Arts; City Art Institute, Sydney; and New South Wales Institute of Technology. During 1986 he was artist-in-residence at the video studio of Marui, one of the leading department stores in Tokyo, and in 1989 he was artist-in-residence at the Australian Studio of P.S.1 in New York. Call

Australian artist, curator and writer

For the American politician, see Peter G. Callas.

Peter Callas is an Australian artist, curator and writer, particularly known for his pioneering video art using computer graphics made with the Fairlight CVI (Computer Video Instrument).

Biography

After completing a B.A. at University of Sydney majoring in Fine Arts and Ancient History, Callas worked as an assistant film editor in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Callas then studied at Sydney College of the Arts majoring in Printmaking and Sculpture and began making video artworks using performance and image processing, after attending a workshop by Douglas Davis and also seeing the work of Peter Campus for the first time. Callas completed Singing Stone then Our Potential Allies in 1980, based on a book of the same name issued to US troop in Papua New Guinea during WW2. The work won an award in Kobe which allowed Callas to travel to Japan for the first time. He completed a number or artist residencies in Japan and the US in the 1980s including at the Marui Koendori Television/Ring World studio in the Marui Department Store, Tokyo. During 1994-1995 he was artist-in-residence at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.

Key works by Callas include If Pigs Could Fly (The Media Machine) (1987), Night's High Noon: An Anti-Terrain (1988) with music by SPK, the installation Men of Vision: Lenin + Marat (1992), Neo Geo: An American Purchase (1990) with music by Stephen Vitiello and Lost in Translation (1994–99).

He has curated a number of video programs including An Eccentric Orbit: Video Art in Australia 1980 - 1994 which included works by Callas, Philip Brophy, Destiny Deacon, John Gillies, Jill Scott and Bill Seaman, and was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and 15

One of the foremost American sculptors working in clay today, Peter Callas forges large-scale, abstract-expressionist sculptures using a traditional wood-fired anagama kiln. After an extensive period of studying anagama kilns in Japan early in his career, he built one of his own in America, the first ever constructed in the country. Callas’s inventive creations possess an ancient quality, seemingly battle-worn and scarred, as if they live and breathe, whisper and sigh—but within them pulses an undercurrent of tension, energy, and passion, reflecting the artist’s inner life and aesthetic vision. Callas has exhibited work in Australia, France, Germany, Brazil, China, Korea, Japan, Norway, and throughout the United States. In 2017, he was elected to the International Academy of Ceramics, and in 2018, he received the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His work is found in museum collections in America and around the world.