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Robert C Moncrief
A Flemington, New
Jersey native, Robert Moncrief was raised dining from Stangl pottery and living in the historical Fulper house, which is
lavishly studded with Fulper tiles depicting Egyptian themes
in an Art Deco style. Small pottery shards were embedded in
the stucco so that the house sparkled at night.
Despite this potent influence, Mr. Moncrief is an outside-the-academy artist, and did not turn a wheel until he was forty. After receiving a B.A. in English Literature from George Mason University, he worked as a journalist, a land surveyor, and land planner. At the age of forty, finding himself suddenly unhinged from a stressful career and marriage, he took a job in a porcelain doll factory in Boulder, Colorado. His task was to "open the eyes," or carve the eye openings in the greenware
doll heads.
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At this time he also apprenticed himself to the studio potter, Eric Schaffer, and began taking classes at "The Pottery Lab" in Boulder. There, under the direction of Nancy Utterback and several other fine artists, Moncrief quickly developed and began teaching children and adult students. Throughout the late '90s his most popular classes were the "parent-child" classes, for which there were always long waiting lists. His work has appeared in galleries in Colorado, New Jersey, and Virginia, including the gallery in the offices of the National Council for Educators in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). His publications include contributions to the NCECA Journal. Mr. Moncrief currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Artist's Aesthetic
In pottery and sculpture I am always interested in human form and culture. The most modest and humble pot should appeal to the human eye. In some way art should always speak to our humanity, either overtly, as in Picasso's Guernica, or with a subtlety that registers beneath consciousness, such as the facile reverse curve of an olive jug.
Though my forms are often classical, dipped in the Aegean, other influences for me include the Eastern potters from Japan, Korea and China as well as the sensuous and mysterious forms of the indigenous pottery of the American Southwest. I am fascinated by the interplay of humanity and nature, the meditation toward harmony.
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