dixie parker-fairbanks
|
foundation Your contribution gift to support our efforts are gratefully received and appropriately acknowledged. For further information you may contact us through our email link. Thank you  Richard Fairbanks, 1985 Potter, teacher, glaze expert and theorist, Richard Fairbanks's story is not what it seems at first. Low-profile in the extreme (he rarely exhibited outside Washington State after 1963), he seems the epitome of the shy farm boy who, after study away and abroad, returned home to family and friends for the rest of his life. Actually, and this constitutes his enigma, he was an artist of extraordinarily confident yet private sensibility with great powers of concentration and communication who actively worked within his chosen commuinity, Central Washington University, to teach, lecture, and make available his wares to those who lived close by. An intellectual village potter, he created a toweringly beautiful body of work and remained a real part of the dissmenination of European Modernism in a remote part of the nation. Author Matthew Kangas, Richard Fairbanks, American Potter 1993 President, Jack Curtright First Vice President, Madalon Lalley Second Vice President, Helen Szablya Executive Advisor, E. Norman Westerberg Executive Advisor, Rita Vermala-Koski Executive Secretary/ Secretary, Kathleen Westley-Ringer DIRECTORS Marsha Kay Alford Nadine Cobb Linda Cohen Mitchell Cohen Jim Egbert Ellen Glauert Alexander Hau Colleen Kelleher Maria Kramar Zoltan Kramar Larry Laughlin Madalon Lalley Rod Lalley Kaaren Mathiesen Billye Turner Diann Weinman Tom Weinman Connie Zehner Acting Member Katy Korpi ADVISORS Monte Colgren Gerri Haynes Patricia Leavengood Lillian Stillman William Tyner  Richard decorating a folk art influenced plate, private studio, Ellensburg 1980's To reinforce the regional, national and international impact of Richard Fairbanks' work as an important Northwest art form. To establish and support a resource center for selected Richard Fairbanks ceramics and related material. To promote national and international exhibitions of his works. To continue the establishment of the art of Richard Fairbanks in permanent museum collections To maintain an ongoing committment to related scholarly activities and to focus on and encourage the work of students and craftsmen in this field. To continue publication of craft resource material. To seek funding support from the public to assist in the achievement of the foundations goals. In 1989 Central Washington University requested a posthumous ceramic exhibit of their leading ceramic art professor, Richard Fairbanks. Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas offered to curate the show, organize an international ceramics symposium and write his first book, Richard Fairbanks, American Potter, published in 1993 and distributed internationally by the University of Washington Press. President Donald Garrity lent the help of CWU's Foundation, Art, International Studies, Alumni, Graduate and Publicity Departments. City leaders and sixty dedicated people from Ellensburg and Yakima enthusiastically staged fund-raising events to underwrite expenses for the RF biography and Finland and Japan exhibits, that followed the university events. Chief Curator Marianne Aav, of Finland's National Museum of Applied Arts, and Director Marjut Kumela, of the Arabia Museum in Helsinki, each came to assess the collection and later, both participated as keynote speakers in RF exhibits, as did officials from Sanda, Japan. In 1992-93 the Bellevue and Tacoma Art Museums held RF exhibits with Seattle's Nordic Heritage Museum mounting the comprehensive Richard Fairbanks Retrospective in 1995. Prestigious museums in the US, most notably the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, and Finland and Japan now own major Fairbanks ceramics. Dixie Parker-Fairbanks was invited to deliver a paper at the Networks in Ceramics '96 International Conference, held at Helsinki's University of Art and Design. At that time Essential Passions, Fairbanks-Salmenhaara Letters was envisioned. With demands escalating, in 1999 Richard's widow relocated to the Seattle area for greater access to art and publication possibilities. Essential Passions was published that year with Silent Sunflowers, A Balkan Memoir following in 2000.  in the Central Washington University Alpine kiln, 1960's 2005 Richard Fairbanks American Potter Foundation established 2004 Springtime in Winter (Dixie Parker-Fairbanks memoir publication pending.) 2003 Richard Fairbanks ceramics, Dixie Parker-Fairbanks paintings, Foster/ 2002 Author's Guild membership, Dixie Parker-Fairbanks 2000 Silent Sunflowers,A Balkan Memoir published author Dixie Parker-Fairbanks University of Washington Press 2000 Something Lost, Something Found Ceramics: Art and Perception article author Dixie Parker-Farbanks 1999 Essential Passions FairbanksSalmenhaara Letters published, author Dixie Parker-Fairbanks University of Washington Press 1996 International Conference Networks in Ceramics'96 University of Art and Design, Helsinki Parker-Fairbanks paper: Speaking for Richard Fairbanks: Past, Present and Future. 1995 Richard Fairbanks and Dixie Parker-Fairbanks Exhibit Sanda, Japan 1995 Richard Fairbanks Retrospective Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, Washington 1994 Richard Fairbanks, American Potter Exhibit Arabia Museum, Helsinki, Finland 1994 RICHARD FAIRBANKS, 'Thirty Years: A Selection', Cale Kinne, curator Foster/ 1993 Richard Fairbanks, American Potter published author Matthew Kangas University of Washington Press, Seattle 1993 Richard Fairbanks, 'Vessels in Clay, Cale Kinne, curator, Foster/ 1992 Richard Fairbanks, American Potter, Sarah Spurgeon Gallery, Matthew Kangas, curator, Central Washington University 1992 Functional Pottery: Past, Present, Future, International Ceramics Symposium, Sarah Spurgeon Gallery, Central Washington University  Director Marjut Kumela and DPF at permanent installation of Richard's ceramics, Arabia Museum, Helsinki 1996 Craft and Concept: The Rematerialization of the Art Object author Matthew Kangas Midmarch Press, New York 460 pp. ISBN 1-87765-58 This book contains an extensive chapter on Richard Fairbanks. The author also includes a section on the powerful US contemporary glass movement based in Seattle. In his chapter on glass artist Benjamin Moore Kangas writes: The Italian influence on American studio glass is one of the most significant cross-cultural exchanges of the past century. Benjamin Moore-glass blower, designer, ex-Pilchuck [Glass School] creative and educational director–has been in the forefront of the Murano-Pilchuck interchange of ideas, techniques, and talent. After Dale Chihuly and Richard Marquis, Moore was the third man to have an impact on Venice and the only one to speak fluent Italian…his ceramic studies with Richard Fairbanks at Central Washington University were significant.. Kangas reveals that prominent Seattle glass artist, William Morris and his long time collaborator, Jon Ormbreck, also studied with Richard at Central Washington University, further attesting to Richard’s importance as a leading educator. |
||||
