Liz Crain
By way of nearly every other art medium, I find myself a ceramic artist. Ceramic work lets me include every arty thing I know about line, color, form, surface, and meaning, often in surprising ways which I can hardly control. I like that! I have discovered that I prefer to mainly create vessels, containers of potentially everything. Some functional, some metaphorically so. Lately my clay pieces are often created in response to and in dialogue with other media, usually found objects. You will find my work in local, regional and state competitions, festivals and gallery exhibits. I am an Exhibiting Member of the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California and each October I especially enjoy welcoming my fans into my studio during the Santa Cruz County Open Studios Art Tour.
I am proud to be currently represented by Many Hands Gallery, Capitola, CA (their most local local artist!), by Roscoe Ceramic Gallery, Oakland, CA, the Pajaro Valley Art Gallery Gift Shop in Watsonville, CA and Pence Gallery Gift Shop in Davis, CA. I learned ceramic processes from many kind and talented people. A few notables are: Coeleen Kiebert, the late Kathryn McBride, and Tiffany
Schmierer. I was a decade-long volunteer teaching assistant in the Ceramics Department at Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA. and was a part of the creation of several pieces of ceramic public art installed on campus, most notably a large free-form mosaic bench in use daily. My BS in Sociology has led me to be a student of human nature, visual culture and the creative process. I went on (a bit backward, perhaps) to obtain both an AA in Studio Art, Ceramics and one in Art History. I also hold a Certificate in Fine Art from UC Santa Cruz.
I was born in Newport News, VA, but became a lifelong Californian at the age of four. I have lived in both the San Fernando and Santa Clara (Silicon) Valleys, spent the 1980s in the Sierra foothills in Amador County, and currently
live and maintain my studio a half mile from the Monterey Bay in Capitola. The current direction for my work finds me returning to the slowest clay hand-forming methods (pinching and coiling) and combining them with interwoven layers of surface embellishments at every stage from wet clay to post-firing. I have taken away any former constraints of method and content – meaning I don’t limit myself to the rusty vintage cans I had become known for – and have returned to using juicy glassy glazes as well as decals, mixed media and surprising found and repurposed object additions. I am in the process of discovering what fresh shapes and forms this work takes. The experimental nature of each piece keeps me thoughtful and curious.
