Dorothy Bearnson

Dorothy Bearnson (1921-)
"Porcelain Bowl"
Porcelain, 1992.
LFAC #2002:05:28

Biography

Dorothy Bearnson was born September 26, 1921. She earned her BA and MA degrees in 1943 and 1945 respectively from the University of Utah. She did graduate study with a Fulbright Grant in Ceramics in Finland from 1956-57 where she studied with Kyllikki Salmenhaara at the Arabia Porcelain Factory in Helsinki. During the summers of 1947, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1958, 1861, and 1964 she studied with Marguerite Wildenhain at her Pond Farm workshops in Guerneville, California. She also was a student of Shoji Hamada at San Jose State College during the summer of 1963.

Bearnson says of meeting Wildenhain for the first time: “I visited the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. By chance that was the day Marguerite Wildenhain demonstrated throwing on the wheel. In seconds, the clay leaped to life under Marguerite’s hands.”

Bearnson established the Ceramics Area in the Art Department at the University of Utah in 1946, teaching there for more than fifty years. Though initially hired to teaching drawing and design, she continued a tradition of also teaching pinching, coiling and slab building. Eventually a fully equipped ceramics studio was established under her guidance, finally located in an art and architecture complex completed in 1970-71. She also organized the first pottery seminars and glass blowing workshops at the University. During her career at the University of Utah, Bearnson invited numerous guest artists to present including Wildenhain who provided workshops on seven separate occasions.

Bearnson wrote proposals to receive a number of grants such as the Dee Grant from the Council of Dee Fellows to establish a Ceramics Center and initiate a summer seminar on American Ceramic Art History in 1992. She also was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant to sponsor an “Artists, Critics, Photographers in Residence Program” at the University of Utah in 1974. She received several research grants from the University of Utah to work on ceramic glazes, 1977-80, and to study the relationship of crystalline glazes to wheel-thrown forms in 1980-88.

During her career, Bearnson earned numerous awards. She was elected to Phi Kappa Phi, the National Honor Society at the University of Utah in 1997. She was made an honorary member of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) in 1991. She also received a Distinguished Woman Award for “Women in Art” at a National Woman’s Conference at the University of Utah in 1977. In 1999, she was awarded the 10th Governor Award celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Utah Arts Council. A number of retrospective exhibitions have been held to recognize her work such as “Dorothy Bearnson Celebrates Fifty Years of Teaching” organized by the Gittins Gallery at the University of Utah Art Department in 1997. Former and current students celebrated Bearnson’s career in the exhibition “Ceramic Ties” at the University of Utah in 1999. In 2002, the Springville Museum of Art honored Bearnson with an exhibition, “Dorothy Bearnson. One of One Hundred Most Honored Artists in Utah.”

Bearnson has exhibited in many locales at universities, galleries, and museums, concentrating on venues on the west coast. Her art works are in collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah, the Icelandic Embassy in Washington, D.C. (Bearnson’s father was of Icelandic ancestry), and the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University in Logan, UT.

The porcelain bowl by Bearnson which she donated to the Pond Farm Collection was wheel-thrown in 1992 and glazed with a brown “tea dust” glaze. It was fired at a cone 10 reduction firing.

Ref: Cox, David. “Dorothy Bearnson: University of Utah’s Pioneer Ceramicist.” Ceramics Monthly. 47:7 (September 1999), 60-64; Ripples: Marguerite Wildenhain and her Pond Farm Students. Curated by Billie Sessions. San Bernardino, CA: California State University, 2002; Pond Farm Collection: Works of Art Created by Students Who Studied with Marguerite Wildenhain at her Pond Farm Studio. Text by Jane Kemp. Decorah, IA: Luther College, 2003; Fine Arts Collection files.

Updated 02/23/2009