The Outcome of Sculpture and Shinn

MC, who is NOT from Santa Barbara, has inherited a pottery floor vase – a quirky and unique work from the mid 1970s by our genius Santa Maria potter, William “Bill” Shinn (Santa Ana, CA 1932-2011). Was Shinn’s inspiration for the design a native American marriage vessel, typically with two spouts? Wait, this has THREE! I believe the artist was saying something for OUR times as well as his: love can be manifold. 

The artist himself was an intrepid researcher, traversing the American desert – as well as Europe, Japan, and Russia – in search of inspiration. Shinn was an internationally recognized potter and teacher, having won awards at International Ceramic Competitions in Italy, New Zealand, and Korea; he was educated with a Masters in Ceramic Design at UCLA during a seminal period in ceramic arts, and the Sorbonne and Académie Julian in Paris. To great acclaim as a young artist, he exhibited at the Syracuse Nationals in1966. The Everson Museum in Syracuse collected his work for their permanent collection.

After the artist died in 2011, many of his former students (Allan Hancock 1962-1988) missed his personal instruction in his own studio in Santa Maria. There, he experimented, and became a master of ceramic extrusion techniques, using a distinctive machine/tool to aid the creation of three-dimensional work. Die cuts can be created to extrude large hollow forms. In the December 2002 edition of Ceramics Monthly, Shinn said “the extruder is an ideal tool for sculpture, both abstract and representational…dies created specifically for this purpose can produce work that can be easily bent, twisted, and joined together.” Today such dies can be created using 3-D printers. Shinn combined both extrusion and slab form creations within his unique oeuvre. (If you can imagine forcing clay through a tube, you get the idea; think of forcing clay through a tube with a cookie cutter imbedded inside.) If any reader has attempted to hand roll a coil pot, you would have loved to use an extruder. It creates even and unbroken strings of coils. But the tool can do much more, and Shinn pushed the boundaries, as you can see from MC’s three-spouted work. 

This style puts Shinn in the annals of the American Studio Art Pottery Movement right at the most formative time of that development. A word here about the popularity of the era TODAY – the earthy and massive forms of the midcentury and the distinctive glazes (sometimes earth tones, sometimes 1960s vibrant colors) are HOT property purchased for midcentury homes. We find not just vessels but ceramic sculpture, and Shinn was a master of large ceramic sculpture pieces like this one owned by MC (who wants to sell, by the way). 

I love the way the spouts are small and the “shoulder” – which is the round part of the top of the vase, is SO bulbous. Vasefinder Auctions has a listing of a smaller, less “designy” vase for $60, and Ross’s Auction in Belfast sold a complex designed vessel for $350. 1stDibs sold a Shinn abstract sculpture vase for $800. The artist was represented for years by Judith Hale Gallery Solvang/Santa Ynez. Currently – from a gallery in Pasadena – I found a large ovoid vessel, raised on a round plinth in a deep brown glaze. At the center of the oval is a patterned round circle incised in deep relief. This vessel is offered for $825. One of the great characteristics of this genre is the anthropomorphic shaping, as well as borrowed design motifs from the Japanese and the Native American.

How did the artist, who began with painting, find “clay?” He was a fighter pilot in the Air Force and found “sculpture” in the forms beneath his plane. An article in the June 9, 2009, issues of the Santa Maria Sun by Shelly Cone quotes Bill Shinn: “There are a lot of things that suppress being creative. The main motivation for me is creating something I’ve never seen before.” The author, Cone, had asked Shinn about his many awards and many sales and shows, as a possible influence on what he creates in the studio. But we have an answer in Shinn’s obituary in the Santa Maria Times, in a quote from a former student who became an instructor at Allan Hancock, Marti Fast. Regarding the push-pull of creativity versus market influence on an artist’s work, Fast said of Shinn: “His mind worked differently because he wasn’t worried about a specific outcome.” MC’s vase is worth $800 in this fast-growing American Art Pottery of the Mid-20th century marketplace.