Robert Sperry
Birth Date: 1927
Death Date: 1998
Artist Gallery
Born in Bushnell, IL, in 1927, Robert Sperry’s family moved a short while later to Saskatchewan, Canada, where his parents homesteaded a farm. Enlisting in the U.S. Army at 18 in 1945; he had his first lessons in art during the time he was stationed in West Germany. Sperry attended the University of Saskatchewan, earning a BA in 1950. He then enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his BFA in painting in 1953. Sperry worked as artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation in 1954 and discovered a love for clay. The Bray, as it was known, had been started in 1951 by ceramists Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio as a "Fine place to  work" for those with a sincere interest in ceramics. (It initially was the brainchild of Archie Bray, a brick manufacturer in Helena, Montana, who said he wanted to collect potters instead of pots and he encouraged Voulkos and Audio to build the workplace on the brick plant property in their off hours when not working on the line "nipping bricks.") Sperry was deeply influenced by Voulkos, Audio and everything about this special place.  From there Sperry entered the University of Washington in Seattle where he earned his MFA in 1955.  Upon completion of his degree, he was hired by the university and remained there until retiring in 1982, serving as head of the ceramics department.  Following his retirement he was named Professor Emeritus and continued to teach occasionally until 1989.  Sperry was instrumental in bringing such renowned ceramists as Howard Kottler, Fred Bauer and Patti Warashina (who became his wife in 1976) to the faculty, artists who were connected with the dynamic ceramic scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area Funk.  Sperry worked in a variety of media besides ceramics, including printmaking, sculpture, painting, photography, digital prints, and filmmaking.  It was Sperry who began teaching filmmaking at the university in 1968.  He produced two award winning films: The first, “The Village Potters of Onda,” a documentary he made in 1963 about traditional Japanese pottery making  - the other film was “Profiles Cast Long Shadows,” an experimental film made in 1968 and exhibited at the New York Film Festival.  Sperry initially produced functional work, exploring such surfaces as salt glazing, images from children’s drawings, cobalt and iron colorants, lusters, and various glazing techniques.  Having started as a painter, he viewed the three-dimensional ceramic surface as a two-dimensional canvas.  Inspired by Voulkos in the 1960’s, he began making what he called “sentinels,” tall, fantastical garden statues that drew on personal inner visions for their iconography.  He continued to make vessels but also made tiles, large ceramic murals and free-standing sculptures all reflecting his fascination with surface finish.  He is well-known for using contrasting black and white;  a palette which he felt allowed an abstract quality even with a functional piece. Black stoneware glaze was first fired, and then a thick, white porcelain slip was applied – poured, painted, or brush-mopped on. The second firing then shrank the slip producing a cracked, crusty finish as a form of abstract expressionism.  Sperry passed away in 1998 after a long battle with bone cancer.