-Erin Lee O’Sullivan

Marvin Sweet is a long-time friend, supporter, donor, and occasional instructor at Essex Art Center. The relationship grew from Helen Tory’s and Leslie Costello’s (EAC co-founders) time at Bradford College where Leslie studied ceramics with Marvin. Marvin worked with one of the artists in this exhibition, Andrew Denney, to build the Essex Art Center’s first raku kiln. He is missed by many.

Marvin Sweet (1953-2010) was a ceramist, teacher and writer. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Boston University. Since then his work has been featured in several books and magazines, exhibited throughout the United States and abroad and is in both private and public collections. He has received numerous prizes and awards including the Artists Foundation Fellowship Award, the Massachusetts Cultural Council Professional Development Grant, and the Juror’s Award from the Yixing Art Museum.

Mr. Sweet has traveled extensively in China and has authored several articles on artistic influences shared between Eastern and Western cultures. Among his writings are Merging Cultural Diversities, Art, Influence and Culture and The Yixing Effect all for Ceramics Monthly magazine. He wrote the catalogue preface for Yixing artist Zhou Dingfang. And in 2004 he wrote, Lu Pinchang: A Matter of Space, published in Ceramics Art and Perception magazine.

In 2001 he was a featured speaker at the International Ceramic Art Symposium in Yixing, China and the Jingdezhen Ceramic Arts Academy. In 2003 he was visiting professor at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, in 2006 he spoke on Clay and Globalization: Impacts on Tradition, Cultural Identity and the Individual Artist at the Archie Bray International Ceramic Symposium. Most recently he led a panel discussion on The Yixing Influence on Contemporary American Ceramics at the 42nd annual conference of NCECA in Pittsburgh.

Over the past twenty-five years Marvin Sweet has amassed a collection of Chinese scholar art which includes scholar’s rocks, root art and other objects used on the scholar’s table, as well as nearly 200 Yixing teapots which date from the 18th century to the present. This collection served as the basis for his book, The Yixing Effect: Echoes of the Chinese Scholar.  He then curated the exhibition by that name at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, Montana. Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, on his official visit to the United States in 2006 used Marvin’s book as a cultural exchange gift, presenting it to the Yale University library for its permanent collection.