Obituaries : Noted Ceramic Artist Vivika Heino of Ojai Dies of Cancer at 85

Internationally known ceramic artist Vivika Heino, whose works are permanently displayed in museums from Los Angeles to New York and France, died early Friday after a brief battle with cancer of the liver. She was 85.

A resident of Ojai since 1971, Mrs. Heino died at Ventura Community Hospital just four days after doctors diagnosed her with cancer, said close friend Mara Cantello.

“We were in shock, because just last week she was still working and seemed just fine,” Cantello said.

Mrs. Heino is survived by her husband of 45 years, Otto.

Those who knew Mrs. Heino described her as a caring person who was always willing to share the ceramic techniques she had developed and who often opened her home for parties and dinners.

Stormie Sucharski, who was Mrs. Heino’s neighbor for 20 years in Ojai, said she admired and respected the artist so much that she named her only daughter Vivika.

“I loved her so much that I wanted to have a piece of her with me always,” said Sucharski, who now lives in Mendocino, Calif. “She was the most soulful person I’ve ever known.”

Mrs. Heino and her husband maintained a studio in their home in Ojai for the past 24 years, said Kevin Settles, who has been the couple’s business manager for five years.

Describing a visit to the couple’s studio in Ojai, Ventura County Museum of History & Art Curator Tim Schiffer wrote:

“One comes away from the studio with a renewed appreciation for the importance of the handmade, of truth to the materials, and of the pleasure of pursuing one’s chosen craft.”

Born Vivika Place in Caledonia, N.Y., Mrs. Heino fell in love with ceramics when she was about 7 years old and saw a potter at work in a store in nearby Rochester.

“When I got home, I decided to try it myself,” Mrs. Heino told Schiffer for the catalogue of a recent exhibit. “Those were the days of Victrolas, and ours had a nice turntable covered with green felt. I took some sand from my sand box and tried to throw a pot as I had seen the potter do. But the sand wouldn’t stay together. . . . Not for many years from that date did I make any pottery.”

Although ceramics was her passion, she did not receive any formal training until she was an adult.

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in art in Greeley, Colo., she joined a traveling puppet show, worked as a bookbinder in San Francisco, wrote for a newspaper in Carmel and taught American culture to immigrants.

While teaching puppetry to children, she took a weekend ceramics class at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

In 1942, she was offered a teaching fellowship at Alfred University, near her hometown in New York. After obtaining a master’s degree in fine arts, she opened a studio in Greenwich Village.

Mrs. Heino and her husband moved to Los Angeles in 1952, where she accepted a teaching position at USC. In 1967, the couple moved to Providence, R.I., where Mrs. Heino taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Tired of shoveling snow, the couple moved to Ojai in 1972.

“She loved the weather and the people here,” Cantello said. “And when she was not working in the studio, she would spend hours working on her vegetable garden. . . . She will be immensely missed.”

Alfred University will hold a retrospective of Vivika and Otto Heino’s work beginning in October.