Potter Green & Co. has represented many local artist over the years. Featured here are 8 artists who have been with us from the beginning
Dave Byer
Dave Byer is a classically trained artist with a keen aesthetic. Working with rusty "found objects," the results are both raw and refined. One of his favorite materials is railroad spikes... railroad spikes that he twists and turns, transforming them into graceful dancers, thinkers, and lovers walking hand in hand.
A devoted family man, his children often accompany him on store visits and during one of those visits, his young son found an "S" hook on the ground. "Can I have this?" He says. "I'm going to give it to my Dad. He can make something of anything!" And he does.
Dave lives in Potter Valley, California with his wife and 4 beautiful young children.
Dave Byer: Selected Works
Debra Manfree
Attending school in the San Francisco Bay Area, she was influenced by the cultural and artistic climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her interest in pottery started while attending high school ceramics classes and has led to a lifetime of working with clay.
She explains, “I was part of a group of students that took on the challenge of learning to be potters. I spent most of my spare time in the ceramics lab throwing as much as I could. We each built our own kilns and exhibited our work at shows. There were field trips to visit the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, where I saw works by Arneson, Voulcus, and Gilhooley, and many others who changed the form of ceramic art. Each spring, local students would gather for a weekend of firing pots on the beach. We would build wood fire kilns and dig huge pits in the sand for pit-fires.”
Debra Manfree: Selected Works
Don Kellogg, Photographer
Winner of two International Nikon Awards, Kellogg was the principal photographer for the widely acclaimed San Francisco Experience.
Known particularity for his innovative way of "seeing" light and shadows, Don reads composition into every vision he sees. Experience our world through Don's eyes.
Don Kellogg: Selected Works
Ivan McLean
Ivan McLean's Sphere and Disc sculptures appear to have grown on their own, assembling themselves from large numbers of individual steel elements, which magically organize into intricate, chaotic patterns like the cells of a complex organism. Of course, the artist painstakingly composes the works through hundreds of precise welds.
Once installed in an outdoor setting, the playful sculptures enter into a dialog with their environment, demanding a powerful place, yet yielding to the views around and beyond with grace.
The son of a contractor father and photographer mother, Ivan McLean grew up in rural California and developed a love for art and building things at a young age. McLean studied farm management at California Polytechnic State University.
After two years in the Peace Corps, he worked on a 700,000-acre sheep station in Australia before moving back to California, where he continued ranching, building fences and gates, and began crafting furniture and sculpture. Thus began his sculpture career.
Ivan McLean's sophisticated works are collected throughout the United States.
Ivan McLean: Selected Works
Marcia Dalva
Working with clay is satisfying on so many levels. It is extremely direct. I have used clay that I dug from local steam beds and marshes. Once I found strange black clay at the base of a seaside cliff. However, usually, I choose the infinitely quicker method of buying lovely bags of the premixed stuff at the same place I buy my glazes.
Direct, too, is my making of the objects, using my hands, a few simple tools, nails, and even some "perfect" stones I have collected over the years. I begin with an intention, an idea, and usually a particular animal that interests me as the most proper form with which I will attempt to capture the significant moment of the movement that will suggest everything: the pause before the action, the doubt, the hope.
Then there is the huge struggle to "get it right". Doing so is always a fascinating process, with so many problems, but problems I have set for myself. Eventually, I experience tremendous wonder as the piece starts to acquire its own personality. The piece itself suggests solutions, patterns appear, and directions become apparent.
Finally, I am surprised with a success that was partly of my making, but much more wonderful because it grew from within itself as well. This is the greatest pleasure.
Marcia Dalva: Selected Works
Michael Eckerman
Michael Eckerman is a stonemason and artist whose creative nature has led him away from traditional design. For forty years, he has successfully incorporated fluid movement into the stonework of his fireplaces, garden hardscapes, water features, light sculptures, and the canine form (dogs). It is the blending of traditional and free-form styles that makes his work unique.
Michael Eckerman: Selected Works
Shelley Masters
Shelley Masters has been transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary on a grand scale for 30 years.
Her natural artistic talent and innate enthusiasm have landed her commissioned artwork in the most prestigious homes in the Bay Area and throughout the country. Her client list includes award-winning scientists and rock stars as well as associations with world-renowned interior designers, architects, and artists.
From the modern mansions of Silicon Valley to San Francisco Victorian palaces, to trendy upscale restaurants, hospital chapels, and extensive participation in Bay Area and San Francisco Designer Showcases, this alchemist has turned the commonplace into timeless art and made her clients' dream of being surrounded by beauty come true.
Shelley is a council member of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Northern California and has studied indigenous healing techniques in Europe and South America.
Shelley Masters: Selected Works
Susan Stark
"My inspirations come from nature. The images are my mind's eye of what colors and textures one might experience in the woods, the bark, a sunset, grass, the ocean, the earth, and the many hidden places in the earth."
I work out of a yurt in Marin County and live with my daughter, her husband, and their son, as well as my brother. We have a duck for the eggs and try to grow vegetables and herbs. It is all very connected to the earth and what the earth gives to mankind.
Susan Stark: Selected Works
