Vicki Gunter ( she/her )

As a native of California, the clay state, I love turning clay to stone. I feel an urgency to create art in this revolutionary time and value clay’s infinite potential − mirroring our own. 

My intention is to share work that stirs the visceral will to face our many challenges, with hope & joy, in the beauty that is in us and all other life. Beauty, that is under our feet and setting sail at our back. 

Inspired by its no-waste complexity, nature is my source and my anchor, in wild places and at home in East Oakland. It can guide us, as artists and citizens, by its responses to our actions. 

I am currently creating work within three series: Canary & Elephant Series: what’s the next canary-int-the-coal=mine for our planet and what are the elephants-in-the-room that we need to remove. …In Everythng Series: DNA is in everything. Each piece in the series transforms into a DNA helix in unique ways. My New Era Series was initially inspired by the murder of George Floyd. 

I research each piece in the field, online and in my sketchbook before working. I sculpt each piece using slab, solid, wheel or coil techniques. I often create patterns as if I were sewing. I paint with underglazes, stains and love the process of finishing with beeswax as well as glazes. 

I enjoy luring the viewer in with beauty to confront challenging issues. 

Clay has a memory. It records your fingerprints and all the ways you held it in your hands. Our earth has a memory and responds to our manipulations. My work in clay draws from the knowledge that everything…us, our food, home, clothes, tools, toys all come from the ‘clay’ of the earth. My hope is, that we will seek solutions in nature-based knowledge to grow, gather, love & consume with justice for all. Leaving the smallest fingerprint. 

Vicki Gunter was born in Oakland and raised in the first housing tract in Pleasant Hill, surrounded by hills of oaks, family farms and frog filled creeks. As a child, backpacking in the high sierras was the best!Vicki always knew she wanted to be an artist but was equally fascinated by nature & the human body. She began dance classes at the age of five after begging, from the age of three. She painted under her bedcovers after bedtime.She first sank her hands into clay in high school and knew it was a fit. In ’68 she studied with Clayton Bailey at DVC & her eyes were opened to sculptures of belching clams, peeing dogs & giant inflating penises. Despite these gems, suburbia in the 50’s & 60’s was a stifling monoculture of America — which was an inspiration for her  —  to leave. At SF State Vicki was swept up into the anti war, ecology and student civil rights movements. She studied ceramics with Joe Hawley & Charles “Bud” McKee and created pieces such as an Etruscan-type cinerary urn for President Nixon. Temporarily disowned by her parents, she worked as an industrial seamstress, continued clay sculpture at Laney College until ’74, and trained in dance with healing-dance-arts pioneer, Jane Brown.   Vicki spent 45 years working as a professional dancer, massage, dance therapist & teacher. In 2004 her partner in dance and life, Peter, was diagnosed with cancer (now ‘cured’), their dance/theatre space was gentrified away, & one parent died. Life changed. Ceramics & writing bubbled to the surface again. Vicki returned to Laney to workshop, The Reading Chair, a children’s story she wrote. She intended to illustrate the story with ceramic sculptures. She enrolled in independent project classes & got to work.In 2008 Vicki was offered a solo show ~ The Reading Chair, an installation/performance show at Oakopolis Gallery in Oakland’s Art Murmur district. The Reading Chair won the People’s choice award at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in 2010 her first official submission at the age of 60. Vicki and clay have not stopped since.She has been influenced by the funk ceramic period- Viola Frey, Arneson, Judy Chicago, Clayton Bailey, plus: Michele Gregor, Lisa Reinertson, Michelangelo…and sewing! Yet, she is especially inspired by nature and the clay itself.After living in east Oakland, with her companion Peter for 40 years, and raising their two wonderful daughters —they married in 2011.Her award winning work shows locally and nationally, and is in several private collections.