Betty Woodman was never confined by medium: from clay and paper to bronze and gold, she ventured widely across disciplines and forms. An artist interested in theatrical costumes, set designs, and performance, Woodman always had an eye toward the stage. “My work for the past 50 years or so has been involved with a sort of ‘setting the stage’ for a performance,” she reflected. “We go to the theater to see plays and ‘play’ is fundamental to the spirit of my recent work.”

This sensibility permeated her oeuvre, where vessels often assumed the role of figures within implied rooms and stages. In Theater 2—The Rockettes (2001), she transformed pots into performers, “taking full advantage of the pot’s anthropomorphic qualities” and creating “spontaneous theatre” by arranging groups of them on pedestals and platforms. Writer Cathryn Drake wrote in the 2007 issue of Ceramic Review: “The performers in [The Rockettes]—inspired by the Radio City Music Hall dance troupe—have […] nude facades decorated with urn fragments in cream with black outlines [and] are arranged in an angled semicircle with their bellies pointing this way and that. The middle of the stage is decorated by dynamic flat ceramic swirls and diagonal urn shapes that heighten a sense of movement. Even though no body parts are represented literally, you can see why they are generally used as ceramic terms: lip, belly, neck, and foot.” As Drake declared, Woodman’s “evocative simplicity illustrates the suggestive potency of the ceramic medium,” capable of conjuring rhythm, choreography, and theatricality.

As the Rockettes mark their centennial this holiday season, Woodman’s ceramic homage is particularly fitting. “References to other works of art have also always been present as a constant in my practice,” she noted. Through elaborate mise en scène—pedestals, platforms, and careful staging of the vases—Woodman pays tribute to a quintessential New York icon, underscoring the age-old metaphor of the vase as body while also nodding to intertwined histories of painting, performance, and sculpture.

Happy Holidays!