Alumni Spotlight
Halsey North '70
Alice Henderson North '69
Life As Art
Halsey North ’70 and Alice Henderson North ’69 were married in Stout Meetinghouse on campus in 1971. The simple clay pot that Halsey purchased from Earlham’s annual senior art exhibition and gave to Alice as an engagement gift — instead of a ring — has since inspired one of the great private collections in contemporary art. It still decorates the couple’s Manhattan bedroom.
No one had Halsey North ’70 and Alice Henderson North ’69 specifically in mind when Earlham years ago began developing the brand “Engagement with a Changing World.” Though it is hard imagining two better personifications of that ideal.
The couple’s next “engagement” is a literal one — beginning Sept. 29 in New York City — and it’s the art world that will be changing as a result.
Just three months after wrapping up the enthusiastically received Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, the Norths again are the principal contributors to an even larger exhibition at the Japan Society Gallery in midtown Manhattan.
In the six decades since Japanese ceramic artists began introducing contemporary themes to time-honored techniques and processes in the years immediately after World War II, there have been only five significant retrospectives of their work in the United States. The first was a 1983 showcase at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the latest — consisting of the MFA Boston event and the new Japan Society display — contains works largely supplied by Halsey and Alice North.
Deep roots
Somewhere out there is a former Earlham College student whose senior art project inspired one of the great private collections in contemporary art. The plain pot still adorns the Norths’ Manhattan bedroom, treasured as Halsey’s engagement gift — instead of a ring — to the college sweetheart he met at Earlham and married in Stout Meetinghouse on campus in 1971.
“I’m afraid I can’t remember the student’s name. I wish I could,” says Halsey nearly four decades later. “It’s a just simple thing. But, it’s also a sign of how all of this really traces back to Earlham.”
By “all of this,” the one-time drama and economics major means the couple’s accrual of more than 1,000 pieces of contemporary Japanese ceramics. Weighted heavily toward sculptural creations, the collection rivals any found at the world’s leading museums (and the challengers are growing in number; in 1983 only six American museums collected the work and now there are 40).
More than 60 examples from the Halsey and Alice North Collection are included in the 103-item checklist for the New York showing of Contemporary Clay, which traces, too, to Alice’s concentration in history and Japanese language while at Earlham (she spent her junior year at Waseda University in Tokyo, staying on after graduation to work with legendary Professor Jackson Bailey ’50 and the Great Lakes Colleges Association Japan Study Program) and which, remarkably, has still deeper Earlham roots.
An attendee at the Norths’ wedding, former Earlham professor of philosophy (1966-80) and College president (1985-96) Dick Wood, currently is serving as president of the Japan Society. Still a long-time family friend, Wood last May — in the midst of the of the show’s MFA Boston success — wrote to Halsey and Alice to see if Japan Society Gallery also might stage Contemporary Clay as a way to help the organization celebrate the start of its 100th anniversary year.
Founded in 1907, the nonprofit and nonpolitical Japan Society plays a vital role in promoting U.S.-Japan relations — an effort to which the Norths feel compelled to contribute, even as their “hobby” commands an increasing amount of their professional attention.
“This is not our business, but more like ‘volunteer work,’” says Halsey, who with Alice (busy with the packers in the background of this conversation) has “made a living” since 1987 as co-leaders of The North Group Inc., a consulting firm that offers planning, fundraising and board development counsel to nonprofit performing arts organizations nationwide. Their clients include the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, managers of “America’s National Park for the Performing Arts” in Vienna, Virginia, as well as the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, New York, and the Maui Arts & Cultural Center in Kahului, Hawaii.
The Norths enjoy sharing their collection with a larger audience, but admit to “running hard” in order to keep up with their full-time occupation and exhibit-related preparations, gallery tours, research, editing, visits from artists and the seemingly never-ending stream of letters, phone calls, e-mails and faxes that surround each showing.
Nesting covered boxes , 1994, by Yagi Akira, is among the more than 100 examples of contemporary Japanese ceramics included in the retrospective Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for a New Century, opening Sept. 29 at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City. Halsey and Alice North gifted the work to the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, in 2005. (Photo courtesy of MFA, Boston.)
A Cloud Remembered
With its first earthenware dating as far back as 12,000 years, Japanese culture also was the first (as early as the 16th century) in which potters could earn reputations as named, individual creative artists, says Joe Earle, chair of the Department of Art of Asia, Africa, and Oceania at MFA, Boston. He mounted the earlier exhibition, co-authored with the Norths its extensive catalogue and is serving as curator of the New York show.
“Japan is a country where pots matter,” says Earle. Both he and Halsey North recall the importance of the indigenous tea ceremony (many of the pieces in the exhibit continue to reflect vessels of some type). They also attribute “the very ideal” of the artist potter as popularized in the West during the first half of the 20th century to the influence of pre-modern Japanese craftsmen and their molding of “a ceramic culture of unmatched richness and diversity.”
Meanwhile, new technologies — particularly in firing methods — allow today’s heirs of that artisan heritage to produce ceramics presenting, in Earle’s words, “an exhilarating kaleidoscope of forms, colors, glazes, textures, sizes, and functions.”
Included in the display are several items actually intended for use — platters, plates and boxes — and many more that despite their intent as more an artistic expression should still be familiar to most observers as a “pot” or “vase” or “jar.”
However, also included are works like Package and Pineapple Box by Seto artist Mishima Kimiyo (1932- ). By integrating clay with silk-screening and transfer paper, Kimiyo fashions extraordinarily convincing representations of discarded newspapers, ad posters, magazines, cardboard boxes, bricks and other refuse, says Halsey, in a startling expression of her concern that “we’ll live our lives inundated in a sea of trash.”
Indicative of the perceived importance of the Japan Society event, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has loaned to the exhibition A Cloud Remembered, 1959, by Yagi Kazuo (1918-79), a pioneer of the post-war ceramic sculptural movement in Japan.
“Yagi Kazuo is the central figure around whom our collection and, in fact, this exhibition is built,” Halsey says. “A Cloud Rermembered is a first-class example of Yagi Kazuo and his colleagues who were breaking free from the constraints of the vessel form.”
Because the sculpture is fragile it is rarely on view to the public, although the Japan Society Gallery was blessed with the work once previously — in 1993 for its groundbreaking Modern Japanese Ceramics in American Collections.
Part of the Human Experience
Although neither he nor Alice are potters themselves, Halsey North says their collecting experience — including visits to dealers and expositions in this country and frequent trips to Japan looking for new acquisitions — convinces him that many people “really relate” to ceramics.
“Clay is something that is so accessible,” reflects Halsey. “It comes from the earth and is so much a part of the natural human experience. It has an honesty — you have to be honest when working with clay — and I think that’s what resonates with people and why this art form, more than any other, is so excellent for reaching across cultural boundaries. And in this case, the quality of the work is so compelling, we’re confident that anyone visiting the exhibition will be able to appreciate the various expressions of artistry whatever their own cultural backgrounds. This work is fun!”
— Kevin Burke
Director of Media Relations
Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century continues at the Japan Society Gallery, 333 E. 47 th Street in New York through January 21, 2007.
Contact: Kevin Burke, director of media relations
765/983-1323
Japan Society Gallery, New York, NY
212/832-1252
(Posted September 28, 2006)
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