Photo By Gail

If you’re familiar with the work of Kenneth Price (1935 – 2012), you already know that he had a singular talent for transforming clay into something far stranger — and far more evocative — than traditional ceramics ever aspired to be. His 1963 sculpture S. L. Green captures Price at a pivotal moment in his early career, when he was beginning to push the medium into new, almost rebellious territory.
Though modest in scale, S. L. Green radiates presence. Price presents a smooth, biomorphic form perched on a simple wooden base — a shape that suggests an egg, a pod, or perhaps a geological formation. Its sensuous curves belie the technical rigor behind it: this was a moment when Price was redefining what clay could do, moving it decisively away from function and toward pure abstraction. The surface, painted in rich, earthy tones, feels alive, as if the piece could pulse, split open, or continue growing the moment you look away.

The most arresting detail is a cluster of bright blue protuberances that jut from the sculpture like a handful of soft, pliable fingers. This small but startling flourish injects a sense of humor and unease — a kind of playful surrealism that interrupts the form’s smooth serenity. The contrast between the grounded, organic body of the sculpture and these quirky, almost cartoonish appendages suggests that something inside the object is trying to emerge. Whether they read as digits, sprouts, or a strange organism’s exploratory limbs, they punctuate the work with an unexpected jolt of personality.

In the early 1960s, when this sculpture was made, Price was part of a West Coast movement that embraced “Finish Fetish,” favoring impeccable surfaces and seductive color. But unlike his contemporaries working with plastic and fiberglass, Price insisted on clay — a choice that made his work feel at once grounded and subversive. S. L. Green fits squarely into this moment: intimate, tactile, mysterious, and quietly radical.

Photographed in the Whitney Museum as Part of the Exhibit, Sixties Surreal.