SONYA POPOW

I started out as a functional potter and often begin sculptures on the wheel. I fire them in a brick box in my backyard using sawdust and redwood duff for fuel.. Many of my sculptures come from explorations of the plants in my garden with a dissecting microscope and various lenses. My first sculptures were human-sized; these have evolved to a more intimate scale. I hope for pieces that evoke some mysterious found object – a seed, a leaf, a shell, a bone. If I am successful the viewer will ask, “Where did you find it?” and, “Can I touch?”

I started making pots when I was 17 in various classes and schools on the East Coast. I was an apprentice for 2 years to Appalachian potter Charles Counts, and I subsequently studied with his teacher, Margarite Wildenhain, in California. I moved to Mendocino in 1970, built a studio and a kiln and worked as a production potter. In 1985 I decided to return to school and I left the coast for San Jose where I received an MFA in sculpture in 1989. I ran the ceramics program at National Institute of Art and Disabilities in Richmond, California for 5 years while making sculpture at my studio in Oakland. My work was shown at various galleries in the Bay Area. I got a teaching credential and taught in Oakland for 10 years (a little retirement, security!) In 2005 I returned to my studio in Fort Bragg and have been experimenting with pots and sculpture in different types of kilns since then. Currently I’m making functional pots fired to cone 6 in my electric kiln, high-fired pots at College of the Redwoods, and saw-dust fired sculpture at home. You can see my sculpture in Larry Wagner’s book, Artists of the Mendocino Coast . Both pots and sculpture are available for sale in my home-studio in Fort Bragg.