Lawrence Blazey (American, 1902–1999)

b. 1902 — d. 1999

An advertising artist and industrial designer by trade, Cleveland native Lawrence Blazey produced paintings and ceramics throughout his long career. After graduating from the Cleveland School of Art in 1924, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Slade School in London. Returning to Cleveland, he taught advertising art in evening programs at his alma mater. From the 1930s through the 1980s, he worked in advertising and industrial design for various firm in Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and Toledo. In the 1930s and 1940s he painted regularly and showed his works in solo exhibitions at the Korner & Wood Galleries and at annual group exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In the late 1930s he studied ceramics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and subsequently showed in the annual Ceramic Nationals at the Everson Art Museum in Syracuse. He worked as a part-time instructor of ceramics at the Huntington Polytechnic Institute in Cleveland, 1948–56. Blazey continued to display his ceramics and paintings at various Cleveland exhibitions until 1992. "Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 222