Top Bay Area Artists Show
Work and Meet the Public

It was a good year for weather, attendance, and sales at the Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival held July 11, 12, & 13 in Palo Alto, CA.  The event features prominent ceramic and glass artists in a juried show and sale. 

The Association of Clay & Glass Artist of California Festival has been held at different venues in previous years.  Last November it was held at the Marin Center in San Rafael, CA.  Prior to that you could catch it at the Hall of Flowers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. 

The show is held semi-annually in the summer and fall.  This year's summer spot, Palo Alto, offered a warm and sunny venue and an upscale peninsula clientele.  

Most of the work is displayed outside on the grounds, with pottery and Ikebana flower arranging demos inside the Cultural Center. 

This was our first year attending the show for Pottery Guide.  We went to meet the artists, see their work, and get new ideas to share with our readers. 

In each booth we visited, the artist was present and available to answer questions (and ask we did).  Everyone had a great time. 

Join us for a tour of what we saw and liked

Sara Gregory is the clay artist featured on this year's show announcement postcard. She works in porcelain slip and creates original plaster cast designs. She casts a unique mold, fills it with porcelain slip, and bisque fires her work to cone 4. Then, she decorates the pieces with striking black and white designs and final fires them to cone 5. 

We saw her on day two of the show and she only had 3 pieces left.  We found one piece irresistible and bought it. When we came to pick it up she was selling her last piece, the decorative teapot (above middle), to an English woman who was "into tea."

Eileen Goldenberg is a San Francisco artist who creates beautiful, functional coffee bowls (above) and much more. She's known for her hand thrown porcelain with black and white sgraffito designs along with solid colors.  Her prices are reasonable - even in Aspen, CO where we recently saw her stuff. 

Eileen told us she works in a south of Market studio with her dog.  We've planned a studio visit and interview for later this year so we can learn more about her work and this great slip technique. 

You can read more about Eileen in Ceramics Monthly (March '98).

Andrea Fabrega is an artist with a sense of humor, or maybe it's the other way around and you have to have a sense of humor to appreciate what she does. Her niche is wheelthrown and handformed porcelain in miniature, and we mean mini. 

Most pieces are about the size of a penny, yet everything is wheel thrown, trimmed and glazed like a full size piece. What's amazing is her work is functionally correct.  We saw tiny teapots with ornate designs and handles.  Inside you can even see the holes to strain tea flowing through the spout (if tea leaves were that small). She has a following among miniature collectors.

Patsy Thola Chamberlain had the most wonderfully whimsical birdhouses in low fired porcelain. She said she likes Duncan Stains for the bright colors they produce. To see a whole "neighborhood" of beautifully decorated birdhouses was a real treat. There is something about them that inspires a smile and at $70 - $350 they are wonderful gift items. 

Our photographer Jonathan, loved this purple camel by Nina Koepcke. She is an artist who's handbuilt forms have been featured in Ceramics Monthly (Nov. '97). 

She uses a coil and pinch method and paints an initial coat of underglaze color prior to the first firing.  Then she builds up layers of a mixture of underglaze and glaze in succeeding firings. This is how she achieves her depth of color and a painted finish look. 

The pieces go through numerous firings, often as many as six or seven times. In each firing the color is subtly adjusted until she gets the exact finish desired. Temperature of the glaze firings varies from cone 03 to cone 2. 

Kate de Renouard is a ceramic artist who caught our eye with this unique cheese cloth black on white design.  How did she do that?  Kate works out of Sonoma, CA.  Perhaps we can get to her studio for a visit to find out more about her technique on our next trip. 

Harold Sloane starts out with earthenware clay to achieve this rich color in his burnished and pit fired pots.  He said it cuts his success rate down by about 25%, but he loves the colors.  We agree, his pieces are richly textured like marble or wood. 

Interested in attending or submitting
your work for the next show?

If you are interested in submitting an entry to show your work in November at the Marin Center, or you just want to attend, check for details here: http://www.aftosa.com/acga/

For more information on any of the artists, see the contact box below.

We hope you enjoyed the show!

Director, Pottery Guide