Biography

My love of clay began as a young girl in Missouri under an old maple tree in my backyard where my sisters and I would make mud pies. I also enjoyed sketching and painting which was where I felt I really excelled. From an early age, I wanted to be an artist and while my very practical parents thought my art was pretty good and they encouraged my skill, I was steered into being "sensible" about a career.

Professionally, I have worked for nearly 30 years in various legal roles. Roughly half of that time was spent managing international trade compliance programs for several Fortune 500 global companies and the other half was spent in a number of Silicon Valley law firms where I specialized in corporate formation and governance as well as securities law compliance as a paralegal. Later, I formed my own legal services company managing domestic and international subsidiaries for large multi-national corporations.

I decided to return to my artistic roots after an early morning meditative dream. I was standing in the middle of a pottery studio admiring all sorts of beautiful ceramics. I remember saying, "But I don't know anything about ceramics!" I heard a distant voice reply "Ahh, but you will learn." That was in 2001.

My porcelain carving technique was born out of frustration with my glazing abilities. One day I tried drawing onto the surface of a damaged pot and I liked what I saw. Carving quickly became my passion and I began to incorporate it into all of my ceramic work. The subject of my carvings is typically rendered from the nature I observe in and around my garden studio. My work is typically wheel-thrown, however, I equally enjoy carving my hand-built boxes and eggs.

From start to finish, some of my pieces may take as much as several weeks to complete if a design if is fairly intricate. I start carving once the piece is bone dry which gives me time to sit with it to permit it "speak" to me. Sometimes a pot seems to be shouting at me from the moment I take it from the wheel and I cannot wait for it to dry fast enough so that I can begin to carve.

Only recently did I learn that my great grandmother was a potter and sculptor. In the back of my mind, I think it must have been her voice that I heard in my morning dream.

I hope you enjoy viewing my work and I would love to hear from you or see you at one of my upcoming shows.

Cheers!

Vicki Wilkerson