Karen Karnes (b. l925) grew up in the Coops, a worker-owned cooperative housing community in the Bronx and graduated from the High School for Music and Arts and Brooklyn College (1945). She studied ceramics in Italy, attended Alfred University and taught at the avant-garde Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At the closing of Black Mountain College in the early 50’s, she and other BMC artists moved to Stony Point, New York and started the Gate Hill Cooperative in l954 , a living experiment in integrating art, life, family, and community close to New York City. She has lived and worked in Vermont since l978.
Awards & Honors
Artists’ Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (l976, l988)
Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (l997)
American Craft’s Council Gold Medal of Highest Achievement in Craftsmanship (l998)
Medal of Excellence from the Society of Arts and Crafts (l990)
One of seven distinguished lecturers in the Regis Master Series of senior ceramic artists, at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN in l998.
Karen Karnes is represented by:
Lucy Lacoste Gallery
25 Main Street
Concord , MA 01742
tel: 978-369-0278
fax: 978-368-3375
email: info@lacostegallery.com
www.lacostegallery.com
Since l974 Karen Karnes has curated the Annual Show and Sale at The Art School at Old Church in Demarest, N.J. www.tasoc.org
Karen Karnes, Retrospectively by Garth Clark (Download PDF)
Articles by Karen Karnes and Garth Clark (Download PDF)
Article by M.C Richards (Download PDF)
Books
Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes, Edited by Mark Shapiro, Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2010
Shows
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY; Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, NY; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angles, CA, Newark, Museum of Art, Newark, NJ; Bemidji State University Collection, Bemidji, MI; Charles A. Racine Art Museum; Racine, WI; Cranbrook Museum of Art; Bloomfield Hills, MI; Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, DE; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Johnson Wax Collection of Contemporary Crafts, Racine, WI; Museum of World Folk Art, La Jolla, CA; Nelson Fine Arts, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; St. Louis Museum of Art, MO; Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI.
