Our Artists

Bradford Gallery proudly shows the work of several contemporary potters and ceramic artists.

John Bradford

John Bradford began his life in pottery while attending a community college in Phoenix Arizona. He was trying to complete pre-requisets for a science degree and took a pottery class and it was all over after that. John transfered to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff AZ and compleated a bacholors in fine art with an ephasis in ceramic. NAU happened to have a great ceramic facuty and facility, focusing heavily on two wood-fired kilns. Both Kilns were built by a Japanese potter named Yukio Yammamoto, from the Tozan Mountian area in Japan. One Kiln was a large niborigama, the other a large anagama. Studing under the tutalige, John was lucky to be one of Don Bendal's students, he retired from a long teaching career shortly after John's graduation, hopefully not because of John.

After NAU John went back to Conneticut, where he was born and raised to participate in a two year post-bacholor program at the Hartford Art School, part of University of Hartford. John thrived in this program using their small niborigama designed by Rock Creek Pottery and Matt Towers, John’s primary instructor. During these two years John Built his first major kiln, a twelve foot anagama in Washington CT. After the two year program John served a one year residency at the Canton Clay Works, just outside of Hartford. After his residency John built a wood-fired salt kiln for Alison Palmer in Kent CT. John then moved to Taos NM and built a two chambered hybrid wood kiln for Dragonfly Journey art retreat. This kiln was freatured in the December 2005 issue of Ceramic Monthly. Shortly after John opened J.Bradford pottery in Arroyo Seco NM. With help from Chris Reed, Hillary Kane and a budding wood-fire community, John built a large anagama about thirty miles west of Taos.

Currently John is helping Ojo Caliente Mineral Spring start an art center, with a focus on ceramic, possibly with their own small anagama.

Rustam Engineer

If something is beautiful it is resonant. If it also possesses utility it can be more so. I love working in clay and the process of wood-firing. It is an exercise in recklessness, beauty and serendipity. For me line and strength of form is the thing I can contribute, the fire and ash and its generosity or caprice lends the rest. I am always looking for beauty; it is a mirror of The Real.

After working in the arts for many years, (I now work as a fine art printmaker) I saw a show of wood fired ceramics by a Japanese master. I was more drawn to these strange objects than anything I had ever seen. I resolved to make wood fired ceramics.

I like working in clay because it is forgiving and at the same time difficult. I work in a purely sculptural way, that is I do not throw, slab or coil pots, I prefer to take a block of clay, see the line emerging from it and remove what is not the form. I have only just begun and the forms that emerge are as much mine as personalities I am fond of and hope to revisit over and over.

I hope these objects give you pleasure. They have so much to give….

Wood Fired Ceramic Incense Burners.

These objects are incense burners. I was born and grew up in India and spent the best part of my adult life in relationship to a spiritual master. The function of incense in almost every form of sacramental worship and ritual is something that I have a deep love and sense of connection with. So, they are special to me and a form I constantly come back to. For me, they help invoke the sacred and are a marriage of sculptural form and true utility.

The burners are designed to use either stick incense, or solid aromatic incense or purifying herbs like sage. It is best to place rice or sand or ash in the base of the burner and place the incense on it.

New Fire

New Fire is the upcoming Wood Fired Pottery Symposium. These are the products for which you can register.

Hillary Kane

I am interested in subtlety. In the luminosity of a thousand delicate hues that come to pronounce one color only when taken in all together. Of a surface built up slowly of many layers, textures and considerations. In an idea that blends observation and intention with spontaneity and intuition.

I am particularly drawn to wood fired ceramics perhaps specifically because of this: a firing process that requires days of physical and mental concentration from the community of participants and exacts an intense "letting go" of expectations when it comes to considering individual pieces. I delight in the coincidence of slow-earned knowledge and undefined chance, and the recognition that each singular work, in the end, comes to represent a unique voyage through the elements, through time, through the serendipity of experience much like we ourselves voyage through life. Ash patinas blossom like lichen on shoulders and rims, as flame licks and flashes subtle patterns in the crevices between feet: even simple vessels are wont with an intricate depth.

I create forms in response to the metaphor that the natural world presents and the human world echoes: fence posts translate into figures in procession; seed pods become delicate drinking vessels... My ceramic work teeters between function and sculpture. It is about the tactile medium itself, the process of its revelation, and the endless reinterpretation of influences from far and near, stories stored throughout a lifetime.

For the past many years, Hillary Kane, artist, teacher, nomad, has cultivated a wonder in that which is unfamiliar: that which challenges customs, aesthetics and perspectives. Her interest in exploring the world has taken her on journeys far and wide, working, studying, learning. Departing Colby College in 1997 with a degree in painting and art history, she soon followed the long-engrained impetus to seek the languages and lore, images and inspiration of distant lands and distant peoples. Her travels took her from Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer, to China as an ESL teacher, through France, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain as everything from art student to sheep herder, apprentice to tutor. And no matter the locale or activity, each voyage became an opportunity for independent research into the local traditional artistry, filling her own reservoirs deep. Two years toil in the clayey red earth of West Africa in combination with the visual impact of indigenous architecture: round clay huts built like giant pinch pots, led to a thirst to work in clay and a desire to honor the entire process of making. Likewise, the landscape and city layout, fabric and patterns, music and pathos of each distinct location all infused Hillary with a sensitive and rich visual repertoire. Penland School of Crafts served as her introduction to wood-fired ceramics, while an intensive internship at a pottery in Connecticut solidified the strength of her interest in wood kilns. From New England to New Mexico, where she assists in running a ceramics gallery and continues wood firing, she is fueled by the years of experience, finally harnessing all the stimulus harvested along the way and letting loose her creativity in the form of pottery, sculpture, painting, illustration and batik.

Duane O'Hagaan

Born in Harlowton, Montana, schooled mainly in Canada, Duane O’Hagan is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art in the Fine Arts. Duane’s early art career as a landscape painter attracted membership in the Ontario Society of Watercolor and the Bermuda Society of Painters. He has traveled extensively and lived in most parts of the United States. During his travels, Duane’s creative talents were put to use in commercial projects creating specialized interiors for major hotels.

The call of the Southwest brought him to the Big Bend of the Rio Grande River where he began to paint once again. He now calls Northern New Mexico home. His first place of abode was a small camper alongside the river in La Madera, where he started to collect driftwood. Attracted to the Folk and Primitive Arts, he turned to crafts, making birds and small masks from the treasures the river and land provided.

Long attracted to Southwest culture and history, he began to study the older works of native Kachina and mask makers. He found that these earlier works, which are frontal and visually static, emphasize their immortal and supernatural qualities.

So with a deep appreciation for these forms and the continuing gifts of cottonwood from the river, he created this series of Kachinas and masks. Each piece is a contemporary work based on earlier artistic formulas of paints and finishes, as well as color placements. It is the inspiration of the original works coupled with his own creative talent that make his carvings reminiscent of the old ones in spirit. Duane is clear in his intent that his works not be considered reproductions, but his own interpretations of the ancient pieces.

His creative spirit sometimes takes him on a journey away from the influence of the Southwest. When this wandering occurs, a limited collection of African and Northwest Coast art-forms appear, attesting once again to the wide range of style he captures in his work.

Duane’s art forms are ever evolving which makes him very collectable and someone to follow closely in the next few years.

Roderick Oknich

My first attempts with clay were so frustrating that I quit for some time.

While admiring the complex forms and details of the pottery and sculptures in Taos galleries one evening, it struck me that what I wanted to create was just the opposite.

When I came to New Mexico, it was with the intent to “be still and know the Lord”, to quiet and simplify my life so that I could learn to listen to my true self and my Creator. When I turned my focus on aligning my work with my new life, the clay began to talk. The pieces that began to form were softer and simpler and I believe wondrous. Now I let the clay create itself and I speak through the clay.

Biography

Roderick has worked with the elements in a very close way all his life, but from very different perspectives.

Born in Minnesota in the 1950’s into a large family, he started farming in his 20’s. He planted crops for and milked his dairy herd in Minnesota and later had a sheep flock in Wisconsin. He watched what the earth, rain and sun could do and loved it.

Changes in Roderick’s life brought him to New Mexico via a 2-1/2 month camping trip. He became enamored with the land and its people and decided to call New Mexico home. And here he began to play with the earth, water and fire in a different way. His artistic and creative side began to speak to him. Through coils, pinch pots and slabs with glazes, stone filings and slips using gas and wood firings the clay Roderick works with began to speak through him.

Chris Reed

Clay has memory; every forming action leaves a mark. I allow these to exist as part of a piece's life - as a story or scar reminds us. Serving platters and wall hangings offer themselves - boxes and vessels reveal upon examination. Heavy thick forms suggest strength and permanence. A quietness is present. Simple glaze and slipwork allows the clay to breathe and exist on its own without being overpowered. I strive for a balance in forming, glazing and the flame and ash markings from the woodfire process; giving equality to each allows for an understanding of the whole.

Scott Rutherford

I am a ceramic artist who creates functional stoneware pottery that is influenced by Japanese and American folk craft ceramics. My work combines an Eastern Wabi Sabi aesthetic with the functional formal considerations of American folk craft pottery. My pieces are either fired in an electric oxidation kiln, a salt kiln or in an Anagama wood kiln. The surfaces of my pots are an interplay between the applied glazes, slips and the serendipitous effects of the salt vapors and wood ash from the kiln.

I am a native of Kalamazoo were I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Western Michigan University. I went to graduate school at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and studied wood and salt firing, Japanese ceramics, and Pueblo pottery. I received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico. I recently returned to Kalamazoo and teach ceramics at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

I established Rottenstone Pottery in 2006 at the Park Trades Center in downtown Kalamazoo. My studio is located on the second floor, room #217. I am open by appointment and I participate regularly in the downtown Kalamazoo Art Hop.