Ann Adair VoulkosCeramic artist Ann Adair Voulkos, age 81, passed away peacefully at home in Oakland, California, on May 17, 2018, surrounded by family and friends.
Born in 1936 to Bernice Fulton Adair and Lt. Crutchfield Adair at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in Panama, Ann and her sister, Lee, grew up moving often during their father's naval career.
As a youngster Ann was fun-loving, energetic and artistically gifted. She played the cello in high school orchestras, and graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1954.
While a student at the University of California at Berkeley, she met and married designer James Stockton. The marriage was short-lived, and by 1961 she had re-enrolled at U.C. Berkeley where she took a ceramics class with the renowned teacher and ceramic artist, Peter Voulkos. They would marry on September 4, 1988 and remain married until Peter's death on February 16, 2002.
Ann's life with Peter Voulkos was richly creative. Peter had acquired buildings in Oakland and rebuilt them into both home and extensive studios where they worked, socialized, and invited students for occasional projects. Ann enjoyed these exchanges with Peter's students and found stimulation for her own art-making. Over the years she evolved into a highly skilled ceramicist, creating porcelain vessels and figurative pieces that reflected her sense of humor, her unique perspective on the human experience, and her love of animals—elephants and, in particular, alligators, two of which she kept as cherished pets in their studio.
In the 1960s and 1970s she taught periodically at the San Francisco Art Institute, U.C. Davis and the Univ. of Idaho as well as exhibited her work in many solo and group exhibitions. Among the public and private collections that have acquired her work are the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
In 1974 she bore a son, Aristovoulos ("Aris") and, in the years that followed, Ann and Peter included Aris's best friend, Ben Sanchez, as an informal member of the family. Aris passed away on November 22, 2013, after a brief and unanticipated illness.
Ann is survived by her sister, Lee Adair Hastings; step-daughter, Pier Voulkos; niece, Anna Lisa Hastings; nephew, Adair Hastings; and by Ben Sanchez. Always in our hearts.