Patrick Siler

b. 1939, Spokane, WA

Patrick Siler is a potter whose work blends wit, technical experimentation, and the iconography of Americana. The artist found his voice as a ceramist in the Bay Area funk scene of the late 1960s, a time of new freedoms and heavy experimentation within the studio craft movement.

Siler earned a B.A. in fine arts at Washington State University, Pullman, and moved to California, where he would obtain his M.A. in painting from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963.In the ‘60s, Siler found his way to Peter Voulkos’s famed pot shop, where he studied with the master potter as one of a handful of auditors who became part of the innovative studio’s community. By the mid-1960s, Siler was solving new problems in clay and invented a novel technique of creating polychrome vessels, mixing pigments directly into pliable clay, stacking differently colored clays to combine, and sectioning off slabs that revealed hidden patterns. Siler showed the resulting mod or psychedelic vessels in important craft shows such as Objects: USA and California Design X (both 1969).

By 1968, Siler developed his signature approach to decorating his ceramics: combining paper stencils and vitreous slips to obtain graphic narrative elements. Embedded in the funk movement, these stenciled glazes often depict elements of consumer culture, playful sexuality, or rude humor. They are also frank in their expressions of material and process, with thick, gestural glazes applied over sturdy stoneware. In 1973, Siler moved back to Washington to teach at WSU, Pullman, and still lives and works in Pullman. Moving into the 1970s, muscle cars, pompadours, bouffants, and animals make frequent appearances. Siler used this imagery in narrative paintings and drawings, some of which was selected by Marcia Tucker for her “Bad Painting” Show at the New Museum in 1978. The artist has maintained cartoonish iconography and recurring characters and motifs throughout his career. Siler’s work is held in numerous museums across the United States, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and the Seattle Art Museum, WA.