I am an artist interested in the visual psychic story of the human race, our struggle to understand universal emotions that cross over to all genders, races, and cultures. Our stories are born in history. My ceramic sculpture is about MEMORIES, in homage to our ancestors. Visual images of trees, roots, bones, locks, & chains are metaphors for family, secrets, stories, growth, life, death, both past and in the future. I see my sculptures as “offerings” to deepen the engagement between remembrance and (un) forgetting. 

My printmaking images are political. My objective is to challenge the myths of human issues and record changes with positive visual images that can help us view the world as a global effort. I often like to make very pleasing and colorful images to bait the viewer to SEE only to realize the narrative is a ‘warning’.

My paintings are a cross over of both memories & political and tend to be more abstract. I am dedicated to the visual arts as a way of giving back to our social environment with cultural images that enhance and deepen our care for human beings.

I see these organic pieces sprouting far below the earth to later explode through the surface, catching strolling bystanders unawares. Or washing up onto the beaches from the bowels of the ocean, surprising the everyday shell collector. The reaction I most hope to provoke is, “What IS that?”--that the viewer feels they’ve uncovered something unknown in the flora (or maybe even fauna) kingdom, and wishes to know more.

Several years ago, I began working primarily with the figure, mostly in the form of busts and heads. The early series has a particular personal energy: as a body of work, it feels quiet; there is a sense of stilled breath.

In the current work, this moment of quiet has become the focus. I have been using subtle gestures, specifically hand positions of holding and grasping, to explore the relationship of the body - our most direct experience of physical reality - to hidden, inner aspects of spirit and the world beyond physical.

Some of the figures have become quite understated; they take on a quality I think of as shadow, or ghost. The birds themselves, starting as only delicately visible, have begun taking flight away from the human form altogether, perhaps appearing in that moment when form separates from spirit.

My work explores the infinite possibilities of functional ceramic ware and the delight and enrichment they can bring to the everyday experience.

Steve began a career as machinist and worked in the machining trades until 2005.  This experience is reflected in his mechanical assemblage works and large chamber pieces.  His love for throwing pottery began in 1985 at the Salt Lake Art Center and for sculpting while an undergrad at San Francisco State University, 2001-05.  Steve received an MFA from San Francisco State University in 2008.  His ceramic sculpture can be found in many private and permanent collections including the de Young Museum, Ceramics Research Center, Lincoln Public Library and Salinas Public Library.  He is an award-winning sculptor and has shown his work nationally and internationally.  He creates a variety of artwork from functional pottery to complex sculptural installations.