Sunshine is a full-time studio artist who specializes in handmade functional pottery, she frequently travels the country as an invited lecturing and demonstrating artist. Her work has drawn both critical praise for its whimsical rustic style and national and international commercial success. Utilizing traditional techniques, her work embodies the importance of hand-made pottery in an era of disposability, while representing a new model of a functional potter in the modern era. Educated at California State University of Sacramento with a BA in Studio Arts and an MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University, Sunshine is the recipient of several esteemed honors in the field including serving as a long-term resident at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT from 2012-2014 and named as 2013’s Emerging Artist by both the National Council of Education and Ceramics Monthly. Sunshine recently authored a book “Mastering Hand Building: Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Slabs, Coil and More” (Voyageur Press, Feb 2018).
I want my work in clay to represent growth and accomplishment, in which I believe reminiscence and nostalgia play a part. I rely on texture and color to create a sense of motion and time in my work. I hope to instill a sense of age, like one finds apparent in discarded objects, with the aim to infuse feelings of nostalgia and wanderlust in my ceramic objects. By exploring and creating vessels kept within arms reach, I hope to communicate how an objects significance can grow and change depending on the path of a persons life. And how the relationship between function and ornament shift throughout the course of a day/week/year. Through form and surface my goal is to communicate a sense of home and memory but also to evoke that feeling of wanderlust that has informed my own life and visual sensibilities. My work is at its very best when in use, flowers or food, the work comes to life and enhances any encounter.