Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident 2012, wood fire AIA 2026
Bobby Free is a potter who works primarily with porcelain at high fire temperatures. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1982. Free attended Utah State University in Logan, Utah from 2006 – 2010 where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After college he moved to Helena, Montana to be a production thrower at his sister’s ceramic business, Free Ceramics, until 2012. He completed several Artist in Residency programs in Montana including the Clay Studio of Missoula, the Red Lodge Clay Center and another at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California. In 2013 Free moved to Los Angeles, California and began work as the Studio Manager/Technician for the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona until 2016 when he became a full time, Sr. Laboratory Technician of Ceramics at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, CA, where he still works.
Functional pottery offers a place where intention and discovery meet. Each piece evolves through a conversation between form, drawing, glaze, and fire, allowing the material to guide the process as much as the maker.
My work is an ongoing search for balance—between utility and expression, simplicity and complexity, control and chance. Through the making and use of these objects, I hope to create moments of attention and connection within the everyday experience of handmade things.