News-Gazette, August 30, 2026
As a curator at Krannert Art Museum, I am continually drawn to the museum’s 20th-century collection for exhibition development, and take a particular interest in highlighting lesser-known artists in my projects.
While finishing my graduate studies in art history at the University of Illinois, I began my tenure at the museum, taking reference photographs of the collection. (Spoiler alert: it took a long time!) It was during that assignment that I first recognized how mighty our small collection of studio ceramics was. Many of the ceramic artists were familiar—Vivika Heino, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Peter Voulkos, and others—but Katherine Choy was new to me.
Fast forward to the present, when I start organizing the exhibition Centering Clay: Connection and Innovation in American Studio Ceramics, which opened Thursday at the museum. Choy was one of the first artists who came to mind to include in the exhibition, where you can see her work Vase on display.
Born in Hong Kong, Choy left China in 1946 to study at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, before transferring to Mills College in California. Studying ceramics under both Antonio Prieto and F. Carlton Ball, Choy graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 1950 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1951. She also received a yearlong fellowship to study at the Cranbrook Academy of Art under the tutelage of Maija Grotell (ceramics) and Marianne Strengell (weaving).
Choy would go on to head the ceramics program at Newcomb College with Tulane University in New Orleans (1952-57) and co-founded, with her friend and fellow artist Henry Okamoto, the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York.
It was during a workshop at Mills College that Choy met Japanese potter Shoji Hamada and British potter Bernard Leach, who championed Japanese folk art traditions in clay and celebrated the beauty of everyday, utilitarian wares. Afterward, Choy began to fuse traditional forms and calligraphic treatment with her own personal aesthetic.
Choy’s vessel forms became larger and more sculptural after Cranbrook, at times sprouting extra necks and organic shapes, and her glazes became more lush and distinct. Choy began experimenting with glaze formation during her graduate studies, using rare pigments sent by her family in China. She kept notes of her firing process—glaze formulas, the various outcomes of glaze application, and kiln temperatures. (Yes, ceramics relies heavily on chemistry!) Several of the glazes from her notebooks include copper red, ash, and celadon, and they were often applied with calligraphic brushstrokes.
Some of them are still used today at the Clay Art Center. For example, Choy covered Vase in a yellow-green glaze, close to a muted chartreuse, and then lightly brushed another glaze in delicate dabs and sweeping strokes across the body of the vessel.
Before her sudden death in 1958, Choy showed her work in exhibitions across the country, including a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1953. Several years later, one of her works (quite possibly Vase) was on display at the U of I as part of the American Craftsman exhibition in 1957.
I’m thrilled to introduce her work and those by fellow mid-century studio ceramic artists to new audiences here in East Central Illinois.
Choy’s Vase has been part of the university’s collection since 1959, before the museum building opened in 1961. It is currently on view in Centering Clay: Connection and Innovation in American Studio Ceramics in the Fred and Donna Giertz Gallery at Krannert Art Museum. Please stop by to see this work in person.
Read the article about Katherine Choy's work in the News-Gazette
Author: Katie Koca Polite, assistant curator and publication specialist at Krannert Art Museum
