Artist Statement
Like many young girls, I grew up crazy about horses. I started riding horses when I was 5 years old and eventually owned my own horse, Coco. Growing up as a stable brat, I paid for my passion by working as a groom and professional braider for horse shows.
Meghan and Coco
As an adult, I still hold a tremendous love for horses and have poured that passion into sculpting them. I received my Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from the University of California - Davis, some years ago, but never learned the art of sculpting while in college.
A new friend named Zakara.
Riding a horse named Mandy.
It wasn’t until the pandemic in 2020 while my teenage son was studying from home, that I discovered ceramics. He worked on his high school ceramics classwork at our kitchen table and one day he asked me to help him with glazing a mushroom he created. I immediately fell in love with the process.
My son’s mushroom house.
Later that year my loving husband purchased a ceramics class for me. My instructor, Rita Walker, gave me the freedom to explore the media. I immediately took to hand building and rejected the wheel.
Then it happened, one night Rita hosted a special Raku firing. The first horse I ever sculpted went into the kiln. I could see it through the hole in the top of the kiln as it burned. It glowed red and looked like a horse in Hellfire. The drama of the night was all I needed to develop a passion for Raku. Since that time, I have continued to explore the medium and fine tune the structural method of my horses and other sculptures. Now, I am learning to let go (of all the hours of work and the fruit of my labors) as soon as I put my pieces into the kiln! It is the nature of Raku to never be able to predict the outcome. Forged by the fire and smoke, the sculptures take on a life of their own.
While still very hot, I applied horse hair to my first Raku horse sculpture. The technique created beautiful black lines on the piece.