John Frederick Shaw

Artist’s Background

It started in kindergarten with that simple handprint. My mother was an occasional potter, and I grew up with wet clay in the house. I worked with clay through high school and college, eventually putting it aside for architecture. I practiced architecture in and about Iowa City for thirty-five years, where I built a small architectural firm with a focus on sustainable design. This has afforded me the luxury of returning to clay. My wife Terry and I live on a small lake in North Central Minnesota…and our cat Katie, of course.

Art Medium

In collaboration with glassblower John Olesen, I have been experimenting with the intersections of clay and glass, exploring how the two materials can be brought together.

I have a great respect for clay as a material, born from my lifelong juxtaposition, but also from its ability to become anything one can invent: when finished it can look like softly tanned leather, deeply fractured rock, or highly polished stone.

Art Process

My work is very often spare and understated, with sparse clean accents. Most often the color, texture and quality of the bare clay is foremost, demonstrating the inherent beauty of this stuff. As clay can be anything, it is the ideal material with which to explore the duality of the world, and the ever present dialogue between opposites; the intersection of soft and hard, smooth and rough, cell and crystal.

When clay is transformed by heat, that moment of making becomes fixed, this always feels a bit like freezing time.

Email: john.fredrick.shaw@gmail.com