Handmade Art Changes Hands : Art: Fred Marer, a math prof with a passion for ceramics, donates 156 works by members of the influential ‘Otis Group’ to Scripps College in Claremont.

Back in 1954, when Fred Marer learned that something revolutionary was going on at Los Angeles County Art Institute’s new ceramics department, he decided to check it out. Marer, a mathematics professor at Los Angeles City College, would stop by the institute (now Otis School of Art and Design), watch Peter Voulkos and his students throw pots in a basement studio, schmooze a while and occasionally buy a piece.

As the years went by, Marer’s little house and one-car garage became so packed with ceramics that the furniture converged in the center of the rooms. His wife, Mary, who died about 15 years ago, had only a closet and a kitchen to call her own. Meanwhile, the collection assumed mythic proportions as potters traded stories about threading through aisles between the ceramics when they visited Marer.

Now 84, Marer has bought more than 900 pieces of contemporary ceramics, but his orderly apartment only contains a few dozen examples. Little by little, his vast collection has migrated to Scripps College in Claremont as long-term loans and donations. Marer has given more than 700 pieces to the college over the years while retaining ownership of the most important group of works. But now he has made a landmark gift of the valuable core of his collection--156 works of contemporary West Coast ceramics by members of the influential and highly revered “Otis Group.”

The donation includes 41 works by Voulkos--who spearheaded the transformation of a tradition-bound art form into a means of free, sculptural expression--along with pieces by other giants in the field who got their start at Otis. Among artists who are particularly well represented are Michael Frimkess (40 works, including collaborative pieces done with his wife Magdalena), Henry Takemoto (22), John Mason and Jerry Rothman (17 each) and Paul Soldner (10). The gift includes pieces made from 1954-58, when Voulkos’ enormous energy attracted like-minded sculptors to his classes, as well as works made after that tumultuous period.

“We’re thrilled to have the collection,” said Soldner, who retired in 1991 after heading Scripps’ ceramics program and organizing the college’s annual ceramics exhibition for 33 years. Soldner is credited with bringing the collection to Scripps, but he only admits to rendering a bit of assistance.

“We felt it should go to a friendly place,” Marer said of his and his second wife Estelle’s wishes for the collection. “We like the people there. . . . We thought it would be lost in a big city,” he said. Marer’s selection of “a friendly place” on an idyllic campus is consistent with his rationale for collecting. Rather than assembling a survey of ceramics, “I bought what I liked, practically always from people I liked,” he said.

Looking back over his years of collecting, Marer offered no profound reasons for his acquisitive compulsion--no formative childhood experiences or Freudian theories, no frustrations of wanting to be an artist himself. Instead, he jokingly accounted for his passion in financial terms. “When I was a kid, I couldn’t even buy a nickel piece of candy,” Marer said. “When I was teaching at LACC, I had to do something with all that money.”

No one who knows the retired mathematician is likely to believe that money is the driving force of his collection, however. One of the first praises typically sung of Marer is that he collects with very modest means--and with no thought of investment potential.

“It’s a great collection, and it’s very pure. He did it for love, with no profit motive,” said Martha Drexler Lynn, assistant curator of ceramics at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Soldner concurred. “But Fred had one rule: The work had to be affordable,” he said. “As a result, some artists who should be in the collection priced themselves out of it.”

“I never bargained with an artist,” Marer said. But he confessed to buying a few things that he didn’t care for, to avoid hurt feelings. “Just imagine what would have happened if I were rich,” he said.

Marer’s modest income restrained the collection, but his intellectual curiosity and affinity for artists expanded it. “When Fred came to visit, he would ask a lot of questions,” Soldner said. “It wasn’t all admiration. He wanted to know philosophical reasons for what we were doing.”

Visits to Voulkos and his now-famous students was “sort of an escape from the daily grind,” Marer said. “It became a nightly grind.” Though he only takes credit for providing the potters with “cowboy coffee” (boiled in the can), they clearly enjoyed his company. “I was a member of the family,” he said.

Marer admired Voulkos’ generous spirit in the Otis days. Unlike instructors who turned out clones, Voulkos encouraged individuality, Marer said. Soldner, Mason, Takemoto, Rothman, Kenneth Price, Billy Al Bengston and many others who have passed through Voulkos’ studios all became distinctive artists on their own terms, he noted.

“Pete provided a working atmosphere. There was very little teaching,” Marer said, recalling the years when the ceramics studio was open 24 hours a day. “There were very intense working periods, when the artists would put in long hours getting ready for a show, but then they would take a vacation and relax completely.”

Much has been made of connections between the Otis clay revolution, Abstract Expressionist painting and the Beat Generation, but Marer said most of these relationships have been exaggerated by critics. “The artists knew about these things, of course, but they were never discussed,” he said.

Marer entered the ceramics scene in 1954, when he saw one of Voulkos’ works in an exhibition and sent him a note, saying he’d like to buy it. But when Marer went to pick up the piece, it had been stolen. He bought a couple of other pieces instead, and the collection was on its way. After Voulkos moved to the Bay Area and his colleagues scattered, Marer followed their activities and those of many other artists. He kept up with exhibitions and visited studios--talking first and buying later.

Artists have always valued Marer’s friendship and interest in their work as much or more than his purchases, according to Doug Humble, Marer’s longtime curator. Indeed, Jun Kaneko and other ceramists have lived with the collector from time to time. Kaneko, for one, built shelves in Marer’s fabled garage and helped bring a little order to the chaos.

Marer began buying contemporary ceramics when works of major artists could be had for less than $100 apiece. The “Scripps College Ceramic Annual Exhibition,” which never shows the same artist twice and often features works by young artists, was a regular source of purchases. “Fred always wanted a preview of the show,” Soldner said. “I would call him and he would come the day before the show opened. He would look over everything carefully and buy the choice pieces, the affordable choice pieces. Initially Pete helped to sharpen his eye, but Fred developed his own eye rather quickly and became very independent.”

Ceramics still command far lower prices than their counterparts in painting and sculpture, but Marer no longer has the field to himself. “The market as far as I’m concerned has been ruined,” he said. “(Ceramics dealer) Garth Clark has been instrumental in that. I don’t blame him--he works very hard--but he changed the character of the market. The work was too cheap, and he changed all that.”

Clark, who owns galleries in New York and Los Angeles and has written many books on ceramics, has attempted to buy parts of Marer’s collection. So have other dealers and collectors. “I’ve had all sorts of opportunities to sell, but if I had sold it I would not have sold it at a good price because I’m a lousy businessman,” he said.

Marer said he learned his lesson several years ago. “I sold a Voulkos piece for $500. The next day I heard that the same collector bought a vastly inferior piece for a couple of thousand dollars. I should have known better; he was traveling in a chauffeured car,” he said.

At Scripps, the Marer collection has been catalogued and placed in earthquake-proof storage, where students and scholars have access to the works. And according to Drexler Lynn, the cache is an important resource. The collection is valuable in part, she says, because it “runs the gamut from superb pieces to so-so pieces. . . . It’s a record of what went on, which is essential to understanding the process and what artists were thinking about. If you are going to do an in-depth study of major people and fill in with minor people, you have to go to the Marer collection. It is crucial to understanding California clay.”

“I wish someone would provide a small museum for it,” Soldner said, but no such plans are in process. Part of the collection will go on view in 1994, however, in a major traveling exhibition. Focusing on the “Otis Group,” the show will document the transition of ceramics from traditional vessels to free expression and include recent works by young artists. The show will be accompanied by a catalogue, documenting the entire Marer collection.