Arts & Events A small group of innovators in the 1950s in
California--Peter Voulkos, John Mason, Paul Soldner, Kenneth
Price, Robert Arneson and Stephen de Staebler--began using clay
no longer for its utilitarian function, but as a medium to
create abstract or figurative sculpture. Called the Clay
Revolution. it did not extend to ceramic tiles, which remained
in the purely decorative realm. Rene Powell has done pioneering
work in a narrative use of clay tiles in a show currently on
view at the Doug Adams Gallery in the Bade Museum on the campus
of the Graduate Theological Union. Called ECHOES AND FRAGMENTS,
they deal with the Holocaust as personal experience. Powell's
tiles tell the stories of her father, who was rescued from
Germany in a British childrens' transport during the War, while
her grandparents were last seen in the Jewish ghetto of Lodz,
Poland. Searching for more documents in Washington's Holocaust
Museum, Rene learned that they were killed. Where, we don't
know. Using both stoneware clay and pap