Larry Elsner

American
(1930–1990)

Tall Jar
circa 1988

Stoneware
18 x 8 x 6.5 in.
Museum Purchase with the Charter Member Endowment Fund
1989.51

Though his early work displays his experiments with throwing, sculpting and firing. Elsner was in full creative stride in the 1980s with his Tall Jar made two years before his unexpected death. This slender vase-shape is organic with geometric designs front and center, showing Elsner’s ability to conjoin seemingly conflicting aesthetics into an elegant outcome. His Tall Jar is an example of his artistry, “As a sculptor, my concern is for form,” Elsner wrote in 1977, “a maddening search for the unity of space and mass.” He was an incessant sketcher—continually refining his ideas for form. Elsner would always choose form over function, regardless of the medium in which he was working: bronze, clay, metal, stone, plaster, or wood.

Larry Elsner was born on a ranch in southern Idaho, which inspired his work, as seen in his many animal pieces, particularly horses and cats. He attended the University of Idaho for two years on an athletic scholarship, taking art classes. After two years in the navy, he went on to graduate from Utah State University in 1957, which was immediately followed by an MFA from Columbia University in 1958. He traveled often to Japan, the first in 1969 with his wife and daughter. Since then, a Japanese aesthetic permeated all of his work. In Japan he was inspired to stone-scrape his work after seeing this treatment on wood fired pots. He taught a variety of art classes at Utah State University over a thirty-year period.

Billie Sessions, PhD.

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This object has the following keywords:

• black
• brown
• grey
• jars - Deep, wide-mouthed vessels used for holding a variety of substances, usually without handles and generally cylindrical, although sometimes made in other shapes. For narrower-necked vessles, use "bottles."
• minimalism
• roughness - The quality of having a surface diversified with small projections, points, and irregularities so as to be harsh or uneven to the sight or touch.
• vessels - Containers designed to serve as receptacles for a liquid or other substance, usually those of circular section and made of some durable material; especially containers of this nature in domestic use, employed in connection with the preparation or serving of food or drink, and usually of a size suitable for carrying by hand.

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Joshua Kuensting's Ceramic Exhibit: Contrast in Volume , 11/19/2013 - 5/5/2014

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