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Warashina, Patti
| Last Name: | Warashina |
|---|---|
| First Name: | Patti |
| Dates: |
*1940 (Date of Birth)
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| Biography/History: | Patti Warashina was born as Masae Patricia Warashina on March 16, 1940 in Spokane, WA and currently lives and works in Seattle, WA. She grew up in Spokane, WA, graduating from Lewis & Clark and moving to Seattle to attend college. She received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1962 and received her MFA from the University of Washington in 1964. She began her undergraduate education with the intention of becoming a dentist, but soon became engrossed in a ceramics elective course and changed her major to Art. While in college she studied with sculptors Robert Sperry, Harold Meyers, Rudy Autio, Shoji and Shinsaku Hamada, and Ruth Penington. She taught at the Cornish Institute for Allied Arts in Seattle from 1968-1969, and taught at the University of Washington from 1970 to 1995. She was married to Robert Sperry from 1976 until his death in 1998. Formative influencers were surrealist artists such as Magritte and Duchamp, “They were dream states. I liked the humor. I liked the ridiculousness. It’s just the way I saw the world.” Other influences consisted of her mother (her strength and bizarre creativity), Robert Sperry, Fred Bauer, Howard Kottler, Heteronymous Bosch. Warashina has a heightened ability for free association – she begins with an image of a common thing and develops it creatively into major fantasy. Her aesthetic is outgoing and uplifting. She worked in series, producing many variations before going on to the next concept. She remains committed to clay today and is one of the Pacific Northwest's most important and respected ceramic artists. In the early 1970's, she made highly realistic, sculptural tableaux, such as her "Car and Kiln" series. Then she shifted to pyramidal covered jars with smooth surfaces that readily accepted her painted portraits. From 1978-1988 she carefully modeled nude figurines to make molds to slip-cast white porcelain. She then went on to bump up her scale to eight-foot figures. Towards the end of the 90's, she shifted her technique to watercolors. |
| Related Objects: |
3950.1 (Sculpture; Vessel, Yellow Satyr, 1990)
4234.41 (Sculpture, Rome Series Portrait #8, 2004)
4479.1 (Sculpture, Kiln with Plumbing, 1971)
4479.2 (Sculpture, "Snow Bird" Sake Set, 2004)
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