Welcome to the Web Home of Ceramist Richard Shaw

I try to stand back and be the absent arranger, creating a poem about a person using humor, irony, and elegance. Sometimes the subject is actually me, as in the watercolor box jars, where I reference my role as the artist, using images from my sketchbooks.

The human aspect of the still life or assemblage acts as a person memorializing their identity using the objects from their personal narrative. The narrative itself reveals their tastes, pastimes, intellectual pursuits, sins, habits good and bad, obsessions, etc.

Identifying as another person in the arrangement of objects allows me the freedom to make unconscious decisions and to act spontaneously, to experiment and take chances, and to let the conflict of self-imposed rules go.

-Richard Shaw

 
 

"In the world of contemporary ceramics, Richard Shaw is the master of trompe-l’oeil sculpture. He has developed an astonishing array of techniques, including perfectly cast porcelain objects and overglaze transfer decals. By combining the commonplace with the whimsical, the humorous with the mundane, Shaw captures the poetic and the surreal with the sensibility of a comedian."

-KQED

©Richard Shaw 2008 - Rickshaw@berkeley.edu - Email Webmaster