Art: Molding the Human Clay

Six California sculptors try putting new life in an old medium

The exhibition of "Ceramic Sculpture: Six Artists," now on view at Manhattan's Whitney Museum, is meant to mend at least some of the failures of cultural communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of America. In California, for the past 25 years, there has been a strong tradition of clay sculpture. In New York, by contrast, any sort of earthenware was generally felt to be inferior as sculptural material, compared with bronze, steel, stone or wood. By showing the work of six leading Californian...