Sonoma Art Directory
ceramics
Robyn Spencer-Crompton is a mosaic artist, inspired. Her work is featured in the book, Mosaic Art and Style by Joanne Locktov. She also teaches fashion design and costume design at the Santa Rosa Junior College and Diablo Community college.
See also Peter Crompton.
Robert Weiss is a ceramic artist of crystalline glazed porcelain, and a photographer. All profits from the sale of Roberts photography and ceramics are given to The Weiss Family Fine Arts Scholarship Fund.
The Sonoma County artist Don Ajello creates sculptures in bronze and wood, ceramics, and mixed media art.
Ceramic sculptress Cynthia Hipkiss creates sculptures that combine primitivism, humor and whimsy. The artist specializes in “wonderfully fat women engaged in such activities as attending a dinner party or walking a dog.” Cynthia Hipkiss attended the California College of Arts and Crafts, and graduated from Sonoma State College with a major in art.
Beth Changstrom works include painting, drawing, pottery, mixed media and collage.
Kelly Hong, teamed up with Gerald Hong, creates handmade, museum-quality Raku ceramic vessels and wall pieces: Asian inspired vessels, teapots, pet urns, and cremation urns.
Gerald Hong, teamed up with Kelly Hong, creates handmade, museum-quality Raku ceramic vessels and wall pieces: Asian inspired vessels, teapots, pet urns, and cremation urns.
Joel Bennett has been a ceramic artist in Sonoma County, California for over 40 years. His work includes pit-fired vessels, drums, wall pieces and sculptures, utilitarian stoneware and porcelain, raku fired ware, and sculptural tile work. Joel works from his Forestville studio and gallery, located near the Russian River, redwoods, and vineyards of Sonoma County. He also teaches ceramics at the Santa Rosa Junior College.
Lyn Swan creates handmade porcelain artware, as well as festive tableware and whimsical, playful “happy pots”.
Sharon McAuley designs and creates low fire and porcelain ceramics. She sells her works on Etsy.
Gerald Arrington creates stoneware, wheel-thrown and altered ceramics that are inspired by nature. His work includes sculptural teapots, vases, urns, fountains and reflection bowls.
The Sonoma artist Caryn Freid is known for sculptural ceramics, as well as functional and decorative pottery. She studied many years at the Pond Fond Colony with Marguerite Wildenhain.
Liz Russell creates the ceramic series R Honey Pots: Functional ceramics: high-fired stoneware, handcrafted and hand painted original pieces. They are microwave, oven, and dishwasher safe.
Kathleen Fox, teamed up with James Fox, creates hand thrown pottery and ceramic art, of exceptional character, design, and quality, stoneware and Raku pottery.
Marge Margulies Pottery creates lively and colorful centerpieces in fine porcelain, server sets and table ware.
Mikio Matsumoto, a ceramic artist at Nichibei Potters, specializes in “elegant handmade pottery that blends traditional Japanese folk art designs with a distinctly contemporary flair.”
Wayne Reynolds creates ceramic art, pottery, Sonoma area landscape paintings, and abstract paintings. He has been a full time artist ever since his training at the Pond Farm Colony under the master potter Marquerite Wildenhain.
Beverly Prevost is a clay artist who specializes in stoneware, pottery, handmade dinnerware, and handmade vessels. She graduated from the University of Georgia with an MFA in Ceramics and has lived in the Sonoma Valley since 1970. She is also a founding member of the Arts Guild of Sonoma and the Sonoma Valley Jazz Society.
The ceramic artist Cheryl Costantini of Nichibei Potters specializes in “elegant handmade pottery that blends traditional Japanese folk art designs with a distinctly contemporary flair.”
Frans Wildenhain (1905-1980) was a Bauhaus-trained German potter and sculptor. Right after World War II, he joined his first wife Marguerite Wildenhain in Sonoma County and worked as a teacher and artist with her at the Pond Farm Artists Colony. Frans then moved to Rochester, NY, and taught for many years at the School for American Craftsmen at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Frans Wildenhain received numerous prizes for his artwork, from (among others) the International Exposition in Paris (1939), the Albright Art Gallery (1952), the Brussels Worlds Fair (1958), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1958).
David produces functional and art ceramics using textures, slips and glazes to add unique aspects to each piece. He uses various firing techniques – wood, pit, soda, raku and gas – to create his works.
Suki Diamond offers a home living collection of pottery, home accessories and garden sculpture, handcrafted by the artist in Sonoma County. She has a ceramic studio and sculpture garden in Sebastopol, California. Working in traditional majolica technique, she employs color stains on a white background, and paints each piece in clear colors with stylized animals, people or designs. “All reflect her joyful observations of the world at large.”
Barbara Hoffmann has worked for 40 years with pottery and sculptural stoneware. She specializes in high, gas fired, reduction stoneware, as well as wood-fire, salt glaze, porcelain, earthenware and Raku.
Richard Lind creates ceramics, high fire porcelain and stoneware.
Artist Marsha Klein is a “contemporary visual artist (who) creates metaphorically expressive large format oil paintings and sculptural ceramics.” Marsha has a B.A. in Art and Art History from the University of California, Berkeley.
Barbara Tocher creates jewelry with ceramic beads, ceramics, sculptures and candles. Her jewelry often contains elements from Africa and the Middle East.
Marguerite (Friedlaender) Wildenhain (1896 – 1985) was a French-born, German and later American ceramic artist, art teacher and author. Due to her Jewish ancestry in World War II, she was compelled to emigrate to the U.S. in 1940, and found her way to Sonoma County. She began to conduct summer pottery workshops at Pond Farm, her home and studio near Guerneville, California. She became a founding teacher of the Pond Farm Artist Colony. Her husband Franz Wildenhain was also a well-known artist in the colony. Marguerite wrote three influential books: Pottery: Form and Expression (1959), The Invisible Core: A Potter’s Life and Thoughts (1973), and …that We Look and See: An Admirer Looks at the Indians (1979).*
See also: Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus: An Eyewitness Anthology.
*source: Wikipedia.org
John Chambers is a ceramic artist who specializes in salted, glazed and functional stoneware.
Nancy Morgan creates wheel-thrown and utilitarian stoneware. Her studio and gallery Thee Dog Pottery is located in Healdsburg, California.