dixie parker-fairbanks


publications

Richard Fairbanks, American Potter
Professional-personal biography.
Essential Passions, Fairbanks-Salmenhaara Letters 1959-1986
Three international artists' correspondence.
Silent Sunflowers, A Balkan Memoir
Rich photographic and written journal by the Fairbanks, potter and painter.





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foundation

RICHARD FAIRBANKS AMERICAN POTTER FOUNDATION
a public 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation



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

RICHARD FAIRBANKS AMERICAN POTTER FOUNDATION

OFFICERS
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/Curator, Dixie Parker-Fairbanks
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

MISSION

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.



HISTORY


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.



Richard loading one of his bottles
in the Central Washington University Alpine kiln, 1960's

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

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/White Gallery, Kirkland

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/White Gallery, Kirkland

1993 Richard Fairbanks, American Potter published
author Matthew Kangas
University of Washington Press, Seattle

1993 Richard Fairbanks, 'Vessels in Clay,
Cale Kinne, curator, Foster/White Gallery, Kirkland

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.