Chronology
1933
Viola Frey is born on August 15, 1933, in Lodi, California. She is raised on her family’s vineyard and attends Lodi High School, graduating in 1951.

1952-53
Accepts admission to University of California Berkeley for writing, but then changes her mind at the last minute. Attends Stockton Delta College in Stockton, California, with an interest in teaching art at the college level.

1953-55
Receives a scholarship to study at California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in Oakland, California. Frey studies painting under Richard Diebenkorn, and takes classes in ceramics under Vernon Coykendall and Charles Fiske.

1955
Receives undergraduate degree in painting, CCAC, Oakland, California.

1955-57
Studies graduate coursework in painting at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Frey studies under George Rickey, Katherine Choy, and visiting artist Mark Rothko.

1957
Moves to Port Chester, New York, to work at the Clay Art Center with founder Katherine Choy. Frey supplements her income by working at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the billing department of the business office.

1960
Moves to 495 Francisco Street #D in San Francisco, California. Frey gets a job at Macy’s Department Store in the accounting department and continues to work there until 1970.

1961
Award winner, California Crafts II, Creative Arts League of Sacramento, California.

1963
E.B. Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento is gifted Noah’s Ark, stoneware, which marks the first museum to collect Frey artwork. Award winner for Covered Jar, reduction-fired ceramic, Stone Forms: Association of San Francisco Potters 12th Exhibition, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.

1964
Becomes a part-time Artist Potter in Residence, marking the beginning of her career at CCAC. Purchase award for “Untitled,” stoneware vase, San Francisco Art Festival.

1965
Purchases a Victorian house at 1335 Divisadero in San Francisco and converts the basement into her first studio.Begins teaching a color and light class in the Painting Department at CCAC.

1967
Becomes a visiting Assistant Professor in Advanced Ceramics for a summer course at Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. Award winner for “Landscape #2,” oil on canvas, James D. Phelan Award.

1968
Award winner for Untitled (Brown Rim Plate with Fruit), ceramic with glazes, Media ’68, Walnut Creek Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, California.

1970
Artist residency at San Joaquin Delta College (formerly Stockton Delta College) in Stockton, California. Purchase award for Pink Lady and Spotted Pig, ceramic with glazes, San Francisco Art Festival.

1971
Becomes a full-time assistant professor in Ceramics Department at CCAC.Award winner for Flying Duck, hand-built earthenware with glazes and luster, Ceramic Statement 1971, Association of San Francisco Potters, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.

1973
The Noni Eccles Treadwell Ceramic Arts Center opens at California College of Arts and Crafts where Frey is integral in its planning.

1975
Moves to 663 Oakland Avenue in Oakland and begins working on larger ceramic sculptures outdoors in order to study the light and color of her artworks.

1976
Casts her first series of bronze sculptures at the Walla Walla Foundry in Walla Walla, Washington.


1978
Artist residency at Purdue University CA 5 Ceramic Studio, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Grant recipient, $7,500 Craftsmen’s Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts.

1979
Nominee for annual Artist Award, Oakland Museum, California.?Panelist for The Ceramics Symposium 1979 at the Institute for Ceramic History, Los Angeles.?Award nominee for the annual Artist Award, presented by The Oakland Museum, California.

1980
Panelist for the annual National Council for the Ceramic Arts conference, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1981
Frey’s first solo exhibition and retrospective is launched by the Creative Arts League of Sacramento and travels to multiple venues around the country. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts purchases Double Grandmother, ceramic with glazes, which marks Frey’s first major museum purchase. Creative Arts League of Sacramento launches Frey’s first traveling solo exhibition and retrospective.

1982
Panelist for California Sculptural Tradition: Figurative Sculpture at S/12 Twelfth International Sculpture Conference in Oakland, California.

1983
Moves her studio to a 5,000 square foot warehouse at 1089 Third Street in West Oakland.

1984
The Whitney Museum of American Art launches a solo exhibition of Frey’s monumental figures, plates, bricolage sculptures, and paintings.

1986
Artist residency at Manufacture du Sèvres, in France, with Betty Woodman, Adrian Saxe, and James Caswell.?Featured artist in NCECA 1986 Exhibition, where Frey also gave a clay demonstration and presentation at the Southwest Craft center in San Antonio, Texas. ?Award of Honor for Sculpture, Arts Commission of San Francisco. ?Grant recipient, $15,000 Artist Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts.

1990
Presenter for La Céramique contemporaine aux États-Unis at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France.

1991
Glaze demonstration and exhibition at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan.?Artist residency at The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Frey’s silkscreen wallpapers are created.?Award winner, Distinguished Women Artist Award and Exhibition, Fresno Art Museum, California.

1992
Artist residency at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, where Frey’s first glass sculptures are created.

1993
Leads workshop at National College of Art, Craft, and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. ?Artist residency at Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.

1994
Fellow, American Craft Council.

1996-97
Moves her studio to a 14,000 square foot warehouse on Adeline Street in Oakland.

1997
Diagnosed with, and treated for, colon cancer.

1999
Named Professor Emerita in Ceramics at CCAC.

2000
Artists’ Legacy Foundation is incorporated by cofounders Squeak Carnwath, Gary Knecht, and Viola Frey. Receives Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts (formerly CCAC). Receives Honorary Life Award, presented by Martin Lipofsky, at the 34th Annual Conference of National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, in Denver, Colorado.

2002
Award winner, Masters of the Medium for Ceramics, James Renwick Alliance.

2003
Viola Frey Distinguished Visiting Professor Series established at CCA.

2004
Dies in her Oakland home three weeks before her 71st birthday.

Source:
Website of the artist, Submitted by Cynthia de Bos, Manager of Collections, Artists' Legacy Foundation

Best known for monumental figurative sculptures with surfaces decorated with genre scenes in modernist style, Viola Frey also made quasi-autobiographical plates in a wide range of subjects and styles.

The plates were the subject of a traveling exhibition in 1996 and reflected twenty-five years of her career. Many of them are autobiographical with ingenious self portraits such as the child Viola with hair in pig tails or a pair of hands framing a large VIOLA signature.

She was born in Lodi, California and was raised on a farm in the vineyards. Her family hoarded junk. She became a collector of "found objects" and was also fascinated by the figurines that she found in shops on the West Coast. She took undergraduate studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland where she studied painting with Richard Diebenkorn. In 1958, she earned a BFA from Tulane University in New Orleans and by then had focused on ceramics, studying with Katherine Choy.

She followed Choy to Port Chester, New York to the Clay Art Center, and between 1958 and 1960, worked in New York City in the business office at the Museum of Modern Art. However, it was clear that the center of ceramic activity in the art world was the West Coast with Peter Voulkos in Los Angeles and Peter Arneson in San Francisco. But instead of patterning her work after the prevalent Funk Style, she was much more interested in the Bay Area figurative movement with Richard Diebenkorn and Joan Brown.

She taught at the Community College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and worked at Macy's department store. She foraged in flea markets for figurines, and by 1971 was selling her work as fast as she could make it.

Deciding to retreat and firm on her style and methods, she worked in seclusion from 1975 to 1981 and did not sell or exhibit during that time. She also did the first plates, hanging them in her yard. In 1981, her coming out was a retrospective at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento of her figures, collages, and surreal Desert Toys.

Frey died at the age of 70 in July 2004 from colon cancer at her home in Oakland, California.

Source:
Jules Heller & Nancy Heller, North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century
The New York Times, obituaries, July 30, 2004 by Ken Johnson