Vicki Gunter

Artist Statement

As a native of California, the clay state, I love turning clay to stone. I feel an urgency to create art in this revolutionary time and value clays infinite potential mirroring our own.

My intention is to share work that stirs the visceral will to face our many challenges, with hope & joy, in the beauty that is in us and all other life.

Inspired by its no-waste complexity, nature is my source and anchor, in wild places and at home in East Oakland. It can guide us, as artists and citizens, by its responses to our actions.
I am currently creating work within four series:

1. Bloom Project: My current project, of 50 California native wildflowers and their pollinators. All 4x natural size and chosen by community. They will all be wall pieces surrounding central life size figures, Blooming Spirit and Soil Spirit. Without our native flowers and their insect pollinators, the cycle of life that sustains humans will collapse.

2. Canary & Elephant Series: What?s the next canary-int-the-coal=mine for our planet and what are the elephants-in-the-room that we need to remove.

3. ?In Everything Series: DNA is in everything. Each piece in the series transforms into a DNA helix in unique ways. California native plants 7x natural size in clay.

4. New Era Series: Initially inspired by the murder of George Floyd, has expanded to include issues of the Anthropocene, women?s power, Earth as home, Folktales of 2020.
I research each piece in the field, online and in my sketchbook before working. I sculpt each piece using slab, solid, wheel or coil techniques. I paint with underglazes, stains and love the process of finishing with beeswax as well as glazes.

I enjoy luring the viewer in with beauty, to enchant into guardianship.

Clay has a memory. It records your fingerprints and all the ways you held it in your hands. Our earth has a memory and responds to our manipulations. My work in clay draws from the knowledge that everything?us, our food, home, clothes, tools, toys all come from the ?clay? of the earth. My hope is, that we will seek solutions in nature-based knowledge to grow, gather, love & consume with justice for all. Leaving the smallest fingerprint.