Coille McLaughlin Hooven, a distinguished artist and cherished mentor, passed away peacefully May 21, 2024 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, leaving behind a legacy that spans decades and generations. She was 84.
Born July 21, 1939 in New York City, Coille grew up on the East Coast, inheriting a deep appreciation for art from her family. Her father was an architect, Donal McLaughlin, her mother Laura McLaughlin a teacher and poet, and her great-grandfather, James McLaughlin, designed the Cincinnati Art Museum. Mary Louise McLaughlin, her great-aunt, was a pivotal figure in the American art pottery movement, pioneering techniques and establishing the Cincinnati Pottery Club. Coille was born the year Mary Louise McLaughlin passed away.
Coille briefly studied at Antioch College in Ohio, meeting her future husband Peter Hooven there before transferring to the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where her artistic journey began in earnest when she discovered ceramics in 1959. Under the mentorship of David Shaner, she mastered the wheel and found her calling in clay. Coille graduated cum laude with a B.F.A.
After graduation, Coille joined the faculty of the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. There, she transformed the ceramics program from a modest setup into a thriving department, all while balancing her teaching responsibilities and family life. In 1961, Coille and Peter purchased Arnold Slade’s studio in Truro, Massachusetts.
Coille exhibited in the influential 1962 “Young Americans” exhibit Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York, which later became in Museum of Arts & Design.
The sterling silver necklace that gained her entrance into the show is now in the permanent collection, along with several of her ceramic pieces.
After attending a 1970 conference in Oakland of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts and staying for a week with Peter Voulkos and Ann Stockton, Coille moved with her 2 young children to Berkeley, embracing the West Coast’s vibrant and exploratory ceramics community. Peter Hooven stayed on the East Coast.
She started to work in porcelain and fell in love with it. “Working with porcelain, one has a tempestuous partner,” she wrote. “One must not get it too wet, or it will collapse. Get it too thick and it will crack. This clay has a willful mind of its own. It took me years to become its partner, to hear its tune.”
Despite the challenges of single motherhood, she established herself as an independent artist. Her resilience paid off with her first solo exhibition in 1973 at San Francisco’s Imprint Gallery, where her work was met with acclaim. Two years later, she had a solo exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In 1976 Coille started having annual studio sales, which flourished for over 30 years.
