Ceramics
Fred Stodder
New to Spring 2025!
San Juan Capistrano, CA
Booth 408
Featured Artist
My first experiences with ceramics was: when I was a little boy, about 6 or 7, I would make pots out of mud from our back yard, (our soil was better for that than growing plants). I got really into ceramics in high school and have been doing it ever since. To many years to count. Working with clay felt very natural to me and came pretty easily.
When I graduated from Laguna Beach High School in 1976, I was given a scholarship from the Festival of Arts, the Sawdust Festival and the Art Affair. The Sawdust Festival also gave Prodigy ceramist, Thom Chambers and myself a free booth that we built and exhibited in the summer after high school. I think we were the youngest to ever exhibit there at the time. The Art Affair also gave me, along with a few other students a free booth to share that summer too. Thom and I Got a Studio together shortly after that summer. It had previously belonged to the great painter, Roger Kuntz who died a couple of years before that. Roger was one of the best and most notorious artists that had lived in Laguna Beach. His ex wife, Margarite (Mocky) Kuntz rented the studio to us for only $75- a month and never raised the rent for the 11 years that I was there. I was fortunate to share that studio with Thom Chambers who was one of the most talented Ceramists I have ever known. Thom taught a community Ed ceramics class at UCI when he was only 16 years old. I learned so much from him.
With the help of the scholarships I received from the Laguna Festivals, and by selling my artwork in the summer months at the Sawdust festival and the Festival of Arts, I was able to pay my way through college. I have a BFA from the University of California in Irvine.
I have explored many different methods, materials and firing processes with my ceramics, especially in the early years. Porcelain, stoneware, raku, earthenware, salt firing, china paint, decals, airbrushed underglazes, the potters wheel, slab building, coil potting, and mold making to name some of it. I also taught ceramics for about 10 or more years at the Laguna College of Art and design. Currently and for many years now I work primarily with white low fire clay.
I will be exhibiting modernist ceramic works that include sculptural, vase like, teapots, and lamp forms that use a lot of contrasting often complimentary colors juxtaposing in bold ways on the hard edged planes and shapes of my forms. My shapes tend to be architectural or anthropomorphic or figurative, or maybe all those possibilities. Above all I want to create forms that feel non-static and very jazz like in their presence. I often slant the sides so you can see them at the same time as you can see the face and the top, much like a cubist painting. This gives them more movement and allows me to juxtapose the colors more akin to a modernist painter.
I start my artwork by first doing numerous designs on paper and then narrow them down to one or two that might actually translate into a decent piece, (often times I narrow them down to nothing and have to try again another day).
I then create my forms with white earthenware Clay, and when they are ready, bisque fire them to 1950°F.
I start the glazing process by first masking off around the face of the piece. I then use an airbrush to apply multiple gradating colors. Four to six different colors are used to create the gradation effect. Each color requires several coats. For the solid colored areas I start by masking them off also, but then I use a regular soft haired brush and apply several coats of glaze. When all the areas are complete, I clean up the edges with a razor blade and then fire the pieces once again, this time to about 1890°F.