Website: https://www.vickigunter.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicki.gunter.75/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vickigunter/
Biography
Vicki Gunter was born in Oakland, California. She was raised by a mother who taught her the names of native flowers and birds and a father who taught her how to love and survive in the wild while backpacking in the high Sierras. Vicki describes herself as a
clay-ecologist.
In 1968 her first ceramic teacher was famed-funk-clay-artist Clayton Bailey. At SF State (’68-70) she studied ceramics with Joe Hawley & Charles “Bud” McKee and was swept into the anti-war, ecology and civil rights movements.
Yet, Vicki’s first 45 years as an artist were as a professional dancer and Co-Director of two non-profit dancing-teaching-healing organizations. After her studio/theatre was gentrified away in 2004, clay resurfaced!
In 2008 Vicki was offered a solo show, The Reading Chair, a ceramic installation, live performance exhibition at Oakopolis Gallery in Oakland’s Art Murmur district. In 2010 The Reading Chair won the People’s choice award at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Vicki and clay have not stopped since.
Vicki’s award-winning Ceramic sculptures have exhibited throughout California, nationally, internationally, and are in many private collections. Prior to embarking on her current major work, BLOOM — Flowers Made You, Vicki averaged 7 exhibitions a year.
As a native of California, the clay state, she loves turning clay to stone. A solid historical record made of the clay that her sculpted flowers must have to grow.
Largely self-taught, a few of her other influences are: Judy Chicago, Marilyn Levine, Michele Gregor*, Lisa Reinertson*, Michelangelo and the Laney College clay staff with whom she studied*: Larry Henderson, Sherry Karver, Susanna Israel, Anna Vaughn!
Yet, she is especially inspired by nature and the clay itself!
⁕Vicki is honored by workshops, classes and awards she has received from these artists.
Vicki Gunter’s art 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—we will seek nature-based solutions to grow, gather, love and consume with justice for ALL. Leaving the smallest fingerprint.
Vicki’s home/studio/garden is in East Oakland where she and her partner of 55 years, Peter, raised 2 daughters.
Artist Statement
On the first day of spring in 2024, I put out a call to community for the first 50 people to choose their favorite California native wildflower for me to sculpt and engrave with their name. My 5-year BLOOM project was born. It will be an expansive wall installation, approximately 10 feet high x 50 feet wide. The 50 ceramic wildflowers, their pollinators and habitat, are sculpted 4x natural size to enchant the viewer into guardianship.
Bloom incorporates sculptures representing balance in the cycles of death creating life, and the acceptance of life’s diversity woven into all living things.
All 50 flowers will surround BLOOMING SPIRIT (A 6-foot tall amorphous, androgynous figure),"blooming" from a life size SOIL SPIRIT (a human form appearing to be soil, bark, moss, fungi) on the floor below. So far, I have completed BLOOMING SPIRIT, BLOOMS 1-13 and SOIL SPIRIT is in process.
BLOOM is partly inspired by a dream in which I could see myself in death lying underground. I had beautiful flowers growing from me above ground. It's okay! It was a peaceful, inspiring dream.
I research each piece in the field (documented with ruler and photos), online and in my sketchbook before working. I sculpt each piece using slab or solid, techniques. I paint with underglazes, stains, and love the process of finishing primarily with beeswax as well as glazes.
I want others to understand, our native plants and their pollinators are the foundation for our food chain.
My GOAL is an installation of BLOOM when I’m 80 in 2030!
HAIKU
Dear Eschscholzia
Popping orange year after year
We're your guardians.
Poppy Superblooms are fewer due to Climate Crisis & habitat loss.
Our Poppies
glow gold in the green
opening of spring
day’s tides shift
calm evens into night
the world yawns
stretching out to gray
Poppy’s silk
spirals into a
Bumble Bee
bed embrace
©Vicki Gunter 3/20/23
I have been creating and exhibiting ecological, climate and plant-based sculptures since 2014. Some of my past series are:
⁕ Canary & Elephant Series: what’s the next canary-in-the-coal=mine for our planet and what are the elephants-in-the-room we need to remove.
⁕ …In Everything Series: DNA is in everything. Each piece in the series transforms into a DNA helix in unique ways.
⁕ My New Era Series addresses the Anthropocene, women’s and civil rights.
California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica)
Pacific Dotted-Blue Butterfly ~ Euphilotes enoptes
Poppy Lovin’ Beetle ~ Amartus tinctus
Clay, underglaze, mason stains, copper/nichrome wire, beeswax, oxidation ^
14.5”h x 16”w x 8.5”d (mounted on wall)
8.5”h x 16”w x 14.5”d (pedestal)
2025
$2500