FILTER RESULTS × Close
by Artist (86)
by Century (2)
by Country (2)
by Object Type (24)
by Period (2)
Skip to Content
NEHMA logo
Showing 1 of 101

Print this page
Image of Test Site Series (Las Vegas)

Tom Coleman

American, b. 1945

Test Site Series (Las Vegas)
1995

Stoneware
4.25 x 26.75 x 25.5 in.
Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation
1996.30

For more than fifty years, Tom Coleman has refined his craft, working with classic, well-balanced porcelain and stoneware forms, all faultlessly thrown. Coleman has continually perfected glazes throughout his career, including the “test site” glazes he developed in response to the destruction of the Nevada desert by atomic bomb testing during the mid-twentieth century. The huge Test Site Series platter here has a dry, cracked, and textured surface with the look and feel of the desert.

Coleman was born in Amarillo, Texas, and traveled to the Pacific Northwest for his BFA in Portland, Oregon, in 1968. For nearly twenty years he taught and did studio work in the Portland area. In 1987 he made a notable move to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he taught for thirteen years. From 1974 to 1993 he maintained a collaboration in Oregon with fellow ceramist Frank Boyden (see Boyden’s Birth of a Bird). Coleman threw the vessels, including bowls and vases, while Boyden drew, carved into, and manipulated the surfaces, often depicting animals; the resulting pots were mostly wood fired. Coleman has written a great deal on the subject of ceramics and has himself been the subject of many published reviews.

Billie Sessions, PhD.

Keywords
Click a term to view the records with the same keyword
This object has the following keywords:
blue, crackle*, green, platters*, purple, red, turquoise

Exhibition List
This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Also found in
Click a portfolio name to view all the objects in that portfolio
This object is a member of the following portfolios:
Thumbnail image of Unearthed | The NEHMA Ceramics Collection & The Woman Behind It
Unearthed | The NEHMA Ceramics Collection & The Woman Behind It
Thumbnail image of Ceramics
Ceramics
Thumbnail image of Unearthed | 1990s and Beyond
Unearthed | 1990s and Beyond

Your current search criteria is: Keyword is "HE".





This site facilitates access to the art and artifact collections by providing digitally searchable records for thousands objects. The information on these pages is not definitive or comprehensive. We are regularly adding artworks and updating research online. We welcome your comments.