upcoming EXHIBITs
Chris Bolton Retrospective
February 1 – March 7
Artist’s Statement
I feel that it is an artist's responsibility to collect and interpret the images and impact of their environment while re-defining those elements into a personal statement.
In the end most all of my works are vessels. Some functional, some less so. The result of wandering into multiple variations of the creative process. Sometimes they are a concrete reminder of a geographic moment, some find that connection by using materials gathered there and sometimes they are a talisman or a mnemonic to remind me; the wildlife therein or the momentary smell of new rain on hot, desert boulders.
Drawing on my travels and the individual perception of the effect on me I continue to attempt to blend this aimless wandering with my ongoing love affair with the deserts of the American west, creating forms that work as a metaphor for both history and terrain.
OH BOY, ANOTHER SELF-SERVING ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY
Just another overweight desperado with corrective lenses and male pattern baldness, I was born when Truman was President and lived my formative years in a land populated by both Charlie and Joe McCarthy with its incumbent fluid reality. Since art seemed to offer the only way to reconcile this anomalous universe I began my checkered career as an artiste.
This has, over the past 55 years, surfaced in many of the usual ways... after exploring all the various art classes at my local Community College, in 1969 a chance encounter with the college pottery studio led me into the lucrative world of ceramics where success has often earned me literally hundreds of dollars a year.
From the beginning I fell headlong onto the slippery slope offered by clay and it’s been a downhill slide since. I have run my own ceramics studios, given numerous workshops, taught both Ceramics and Sculpture at South Seattle Community College, been featured in several solo shows and been juried out of my fair share of exhibits.
This all consuming fascination has led me to try my hand at nearly all variations of the ceramic medium from sagger firing and raku, through salt firing, soda firing, wood firing and high fire gas reduction to basic electric kiln firing.
I can currently be found teaching Community Education ceramics here at Columbia Gorge Community College while living out my dotage in The Dalles.
—Chris Bolton - 2023