Robert Winokur

1933Born Brooklyn, New York

2020 Died Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

EDUCATION

1956BFA Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania

1958MFA New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Alfred, New York

APPRENTICESHIPS AND RESIDENCIES

1985 Artist-in-Residence, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Arts / Industry, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE

1958-1963Ceramics, Design and Art History Faculty, North Texas State University, Denton, Texas

1964-1965Co-owner, Cape Street Pottery, Ashfield, Massachusetts

1966-2005Professor Emeritus, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania

APPRENTICESHIPS AND RESIDENCIES

1966, 1970, 1980Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine

1978Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, Montana

2006Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado

2007Northern Clay Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Winokur creates ceramic sculptures that explore the concept of a house as a container. His early work, from the 1970s, consisted of vessel forms and functional domestic ceramics.

Winokur soon moved on to creating more complicated forms including his "Table series" featuring stoneware stewpots and house sculptures on corresponding stoneware bases. He created monumental works, requiring the use of a scaffold.

The colorful geometry that characterizes Winokur's stoneware houses is influenced by the innocence and spontaneity he sees in children's drawings of houses. Winokur's houses explore color and construction. He typically uses a Pennsylvania brick and fire clay to construct slab-built house sculptures, that are usually salt fired. 

In addition to the houses, Winokur's work includes a variety of forms including shrines, wedges, figurative sculptures and special commissions.  

An interview with Robert Winokur conducted July 23 and 24, 2011 by Mija Riedel, for the Archives of American Art’s Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America is available at:
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-robert-winokur-15999