As the ceramic arts progress into a new millennium, artists and historians are studying the innovators in the medium who helped forge the style of art in the 20th century. One of the top names on the list is Jim Leedy. [more]

For half a century, Jim Leedy, 69, has carried the haunting memory of corpses floating under water. It was the most harrowing sight of his 1951-52 tour of duty in Korea as a military photographer. The influential Kansas City artist and teacher, best known for his innovative and expressionist ceramics works, has long kept his war memories to himself. [more]

The need to come to grip with his harrowing memories of a 1951-52 tour of duty in Korea as a military photographer led Jim Leedy to create the monumental wall installation and large-scale sculptural work displayed in his recent show at Grand Arts. Leedy, 69 and a member of the faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute since 1966, is best known for his innovative Abstract-Expressionist ceramics. He pioneered the genre along with clay giants Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio after absorbing the Ab-Ex esthetic firsthand during frequent visits to New York in the 1950s.

Seeing is an expression of memory, it is experiences and knowledge that individualize perception. The memory allows past information to interact and distort the present. New thoughts are assimilated by existing patterns of seeing. In the ceramic works of Jim Leedy the past and the present are inseparably combined to create new visual worlds. [more] (located at www.hughmerrill.com)