Artist Statement

Meghan Morier as a girl with curly blonde hair. Standing next to a brown horse with a red halter.

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 Morier riding her horse in an outdoor riding arena, wearing a riding helmet, jacket, and gloves, with a wooden fence and trees in the background.
Meghan Morier smiling and touching her brown horse inside a stable. The girl is wearing a gray sweatshirt with graphic print and a yellow cap. The horse is standing behind a metal railing.

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 woman with curly gray hair and a red shirt is petting a brown horse with a black mane.
A woman riding a brown horse at a canter in an outdoor riding arena, wearing a white helmet, brown shirt, and white riding pants.

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.

Ceramic mushroom sculpture with a red cap and white spots on a wooden table.

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.

Adding horse hair to a ceramic raku horse sculpture, on a turntable, outdoors on a concrete surface.

While still very hot, I applied horse hair to my first Raku horse sculpture. The technique created beautiful black lines on the piece.