Joe Mariscal
Artist Website Link

Post Columbian
low fired ceramic, smoked terra sigillata slip
16” x 16” x 11”
2017
$1,250

I recently retired as a full time art instructor at San Joaquin Delta College. I took my first ceramic class at Delta College with Bruce Duke, whose ceramic program produced such notable ceramic artists as Viola Frey, Michael Lucero, and Bill Abright. I have a BA in Art History from the Universidad de Las Americas in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, and a Master of Arts degree from California State University, Sacramento.

I have been slabbing, coiling and burnishing clay for over 40 years. My creative work is figurative in nature, derived and inspired from my travels, personal feelings, interactions, reactions and connections to the world and the human condition.  The figures I construct are dried to the “bone dry” stage and are burnished with a particular colored slip dependent upon the ethnicity or species of the subject. Historically clay has been burnished with smooth river rocks passed from one generation to another. I however, I am not so romantic. I utilize plastic grocery bags and other things like Hematite from a nature company store, or the loop on a combination lock. In other words whatever's handy.