Marilyn Levine, 69; Her Ceramic Works Looked Like Real Leather

Marilyn Levine, who specialized in trompe l’oeil art with her ceramic jackets, boots and handbags that looked like comfortably worn leather, has died. She was 69.

Levine died of cancer April 2 at her home in Oakland, according to Sam Jornlin, who had been cataloging her work.

Although many artists refine, vary or shift styles throughout their careers, Levine stuck to the realistic sculpture she devised 35 years ago as a graduate student at UC Berkeley.

“In a lesser artist, this apparent lack of development would be interpreted as a severe limitation. However, in Levine’s case, it confirms the unwavering power of her vision,” commented a reviewer for the Record of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, when Levine staged a 25-year retrospective of her work at the city’s Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in 1999.

Levine’s sculptures are included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art.

At the time of Levine’s most recent survey show, in 2004 at the Frank Lloyd Gallery in Santa Monica, reviewer Leah Ollman wrote in The Times: “Marilyn Levine is one of those artist/tricksters whose illusionistic technique is so refined that her work blurs the boundaries between real and represented.”

Appraising Levine’s ceramic versions of workmen’s jackets, Ollman noted: “They do, indeed, have the persuasive weight and supple ripples of leather. They are scraped and cracked in just the way and in just the places that long-worn leather garments tend to be.

“The same hyperrealism, as well as narrative pull,” the reviewer continued, “work their wonders in Levine’s bags and purses. In their native material, these satchels and shoulder bags would be too ordinary to merit special interest. Rendered in clay, they become objects of fascination, meticulous and loving portraits of the everyday.”

Born Dec. 22, 1935, in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, the former Marilyn Hayes grew up in Calgary. She earned a master’s in chemistry from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she met and married her husband, Sidney Levine, now deceased.

The artist began her career as a chemist, but after the couple moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, she took up pottery as a hobby.

A trip to California in 1968 gave her new insights into the possibilities of ceramic art. A year later, she moved to Berkeley to study with Peter Voulkos.

While developing her signature style, she earned a master of arts and master of fine arts from UC Berkeley in 1970 and 1971. She subsequently taught art at UC Berkeley and the University of Utah and intermittently lectured at universities throughout the United States and in Canada, Japan, Korea and Europe.

As an artist, she staged 40 solo shows and earned awards from three ceramics societies and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Levine is survived by her domestic partner, John Allen; and a brother, Robert Hayes.

The family has asked that any memorial contributions be made to a cancer research organization of the donor’s choice.