Humans all around the world have been making pottery since we evolved, lived in caves, discovered fire. Long ago at a Chinese archaeological exhibit, I saw the fingerprints of an early human in a clay pinch pot, possibly 20,000 years old. Those fingerprints were so immediate, so present, the person could have been sitting next to me. It made me shiver. I felt profoundly the familial bond of all humankind. Working with clay keeps me humble. A sense of humor helps.
http://www.doradelarios.com/biography/
In this lifetime, Mary began to study the potter’s art and craft as a child, c. 1958, at the studio of Dora de Larios, in Los Angeles, California. She pursued her study and practice at Mills College, under the great Prieto, and at U.C. Irvine under architectural sculptor John Mason.
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1976 to 1978, Mary underwent a rigorous apprentice-style Bachelor of Arts program in California Craftsman-style Ceramic Art, under master potter/painter, Al Johnsen, graduating with Honors in the Major. Working with Al is beautfully described by another one of his many disciples, Ramah Commanday, as follows:
“In college, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I finally begin learning to throw. My teacher, Al Johnson had been a devoted student of Marguerite Wildenhain, a Dutch-born, Bauhaus-trained potter who became one of the major founders of studio ceramics in this country. As Al brought ceramics classes from non-credit status to an essential part of a design program, he passed along Wildenhain’s disciplined choreography of throwing technique, and her unassailable Bauhaus forms to a generation of university students.
A Marguerite Wildenhain bowl made in the mid-1970s at Pond Farm, Guerneville, California. This stoneware with colored slip, glaze and sgraffito design was acquired by Barbara Brown and kept on display in her home until 2018. At that time Barbara asked Bill Geisinger to take custody of the bowl until it can be displayed to the public at a museum.
“Deeply influenced by Marguerite Wildenhain, and by Bernard Leach’s romantic marriage of Japanese and British functional pottery tradition, studio ceramics in seventies Northern California became an orthodoxy of reduction-fired stoneware and porcelain, with Leach’s A Potters Book as the Old Testament, and Daniel Rhodes’ Stoneware and Porcelain: The Art of High Fired Pottery, as the New. (n.b. Al and Rhodes met as MFA students at Alfred University and they ended up being friends and neighbors on Swanton Road in the Santa Cruz mountains. Another one of Al’s gospels was Pioneer Pottery by Michael Cardew.)
Daniel Rhodes glazed plate
Just north of Santa Cruz, Bruce and Marcia McDougal ran the Big Creek Pottery in an old dairy farm on a hilltop between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Cruz mountains. Their pottery and their partnership combined the free-spirited zeitgeist of the early 70’s, with a deep devotion to solid design and disciplined craftsmanship. I spent my 20th summer, one of a dozen students, at a wooden kick wheel, filling ware-boards with practice mugs, bowls, pitchers and jars. We were all on the cusp of adult life, and all earnestly pursuing the dream of life as a studio potter. We would live somewhere beautiful and make our easy livings playing with clay. We got the message and we embraced it: follow your bliss.” Ramah Commanday
At this time, Mary made pilgrimages to the studios of legends-in-their-own-time master potters Bernard Leach in Cornwall, England, and Bauhaus potter Marguerite Wildenhain, on the Russian River in Guerneville, California.
In 1978, Mary opened shop as an independent studio potter, at Bluebird Creek Pottery in Santa Cruz, California. She followed her bliss: falling into a routine of throwing pots on the wheel in her backyard studio by the beach in the mornings, swimming in the ocean in the afternoons, and writing poetry and making music with friends in the evenings. Her porcelain, carved celadon, and stoneware work has been sold by Gumps of San Francisco, and by fine arts galleries in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Murphys, California. Her work resides in private collections in the United States, Japan, and Europe.
copper red vase by Mary Flodin
Mary has participated in a number of community arts projects, including the Lifeyard Peace Sculpture Project on the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz in the 1980’s. In 1982, Mary was invited to take part in a Kirlian photography project, pictorially documenting the energy fields of potters working with clay.
The project, by artist/medical scientist Minna Hertel, resulted in a stunning and astounding show in Capitola, California, revealing the hidden auras of humans and the materials they contact, and in an essay by Mary, published in the February, 1983 issue of Ceramics Monthly Magazine. This introduction to Kirlian photography led Mary to begin her exploration into the physics and metaphysics of biotic energy fields.
At this time, Bluebird Creek Pottery produces functional kitchenware, vases, and lamps, as well as fountains, flower pots, and small votive sculptures for the garden, ritual and ceremonial pieces for life events such as weddings and births, and whatever other forms the creative earth-potter synergy expresses and manifests in the moment. The potter views her work with clay as a spiritual and healing act of communion and joy — liberating, soothing, balancing, centering, elevating and purifying body, mind, and creative spirit.
The project, by artist/medical scientist Minna Hertel, resulted in a stunning and astounding show in Capitola, California, revealing the hidden auras of humans and the materials they contact, and in an essay by Mary, published in the February, 1983 issue of Ceramics Monthly Magazine. This introduction to Kirlian photography led Mary to begin her exploration into the physics and metaphysics of biotic energy fields.