Large Jar with Elongated Neck and Multi Color Pigments [SOLD]

Rick Dillingham (1952-1994) is best known for his wonderful pottery vessels that were constructed, fractured, and reassembled in the likeness of broken prehistoric pueblo pottery being discovered in excavations in the Southwest. He was fascinated with pueblo pottery, be it prehistoric, historic or contemporary.

He began his experimentation with fractured and reassembled pottery while a student at the University of New Mexico in the early 1970s. He would construct a vessel, break it apart, paint each individual shard and then reassemble the pieces using black mastic that would be visible between the fragments. Supposedly, early in his career, Dillingham accidentally broke one of his ceramic pieces and decided to patch it back together, thus determining his path as an artist for the remainder of his career. He dispelled the prevailing thought that breakage of an art object was the end of that object. For him, it was a beginning.

Dillingham built his vessels in the traditional pueblo fashion of coils, not using a potter's wheel. He chose this most elemental form of construction, perhaps, because of his absolute love of pueblo pottery. His palette of colors soothes the visual senses without a shock to the system. One cannot simply look at this work, it demands to be held and caressed as the sensual object that it is.

This jar is beige in color with highlights of blues, greens, red, browns and shades of other colors in an arrangement that produces a striking balance in asymmetry.  The jar is typical of Dillingham’s broken shard pottery, reassembled to be whole again. The jar is signed on the underside and dated January with the year appearing to be 1986.

Condition: original condition

Recommended Reading:

Rick Dillingham 1952-1994: A Retrospective Exhibition by Author Unknown

Rick Dillingham: 1993 Distinguished Artist Award (Rotary Club of Santa Fe) by Suzanne Abel-Vidor, et al

Provenance: from a gentleman in New York who purchased it at an exhibit in the 1980s when Dillingham was lecturing at the University of Buffalo