Living Clay

By Priscilla Hoback

The murals are visual stories telling of familiar animals and unusual experiences that have quickened my heartbeat with fear or love. Some are from dream time and half-remembered images when humans, animals, gods, and the elements lived without hierarchy. Others are personal myths from kingdoms of alchemical minerals and symbolic animals, fused together into one totality. -Priscilla Hoback, Living Clay

In Living Clay, Priscilla Hoback details her journey deep into the creative process revealing her techniques and a unique artistic life as she follows the voice of the clay. Digging local clays, developing a vocabulary of glazes, and building high-fire kilns is work that is grounded in the earth itself. This foundation, along with a fascination for experimenting with the limits of clay - its textures, edges, and infinite variations - led her to create an original art form she calls Murals. These murals have their roots in prehistoric cave art, indigenous clays, and her own powerful response to the breathtaking canyons, open sky, and ancient beauty of the land in New Mexico. Hoback's murals depict the native animals she knows so well - herds of horses, antelope, majestic buffalo, white deer, and migratory wild birds.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1890932140
• ISBN13: 9781890932145
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Sherman Asher Publishing
• Length: 99 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.8" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Murals Made in the Land of Enchantment

"I gather the clay for my work, one mural at a time." ~Prinscilla Hoback While traveling across America as a teenager, I remember borrowing money from my brother in order to buy a set of clay dishes in New Mexico. I was fascinated by the colorful glazes and simplicity of the design. Prinscilla takes clay to new levels of creativity. I love her "Earth Dancers, 1998 Mural" that shows horses dancing like spirit horses across clay backgrounds. She finds horses visually exciting and loves the image of horses silhouetted against the sky. Prinscilla Hoback started to make bowl forms, pitchers and plates and platters. She fell in love with clay and while working at her mother's restaurant, The Pink Adobe, she learned to make pots. Soon, she was selling sugar bowls, cream pitchers and coffee mugs. As she states, it was a "earn as you learn" situation. Now she spends her time quarrying her own clay, developing glazes and building high-fire kilns. Her murals depict herds of horses, antelope, buffalo, white deer and migratory wild birds. Her work is a passionate expression of all she loves. Her new passion is writing and she loves gardening and cooking. What I mostly remember about New Mexico is how warm the earth felt on my feet and then there are those hail storms! It seemed very much like Africa to me. There are people who love the scent of the earth where they live and I recognize this love of the earth in Prinscilla. I was amused at how she mixed dirt from her driveway with commercially prepared clay and then started to use native clays. This is truly a fascinating book with creative writing and pictures of the artist's life and loves. There are pictures of her home in Galisteo and she takes the reader on a small tour of the Galisteo basin. If you love pottery, the creative story of the kiln will fascinate you and you might be amused by Prinscilla's humor. The cover is quite beautiful with a burnt orange background of clay and horses dancing playfully on a mural. ~The Rebecca Review

Singular Beauty

In the November 2000 issue of The Bloomsbury Review, in the "Gifts for Booklovers" section Lori D. Kranz wrote: Her medium is clay, her inspiration the Galisteo Basin where she lives and works. Native New Mexican Priscilla Hoback makes what she calls "clay murals" or fired clay paintings. Hoback started out as a self -taught potter in Santa Fe, where she was born, and for many years created and sold functional pieces for the kitchen in her studio/shop on Canyon Road and at local craft fairs. In 1977, with her children gone to college, she yearned for a change, for a more peaceful life in the country, and so she bought a small, run-down ranch near Galisteo village, which she turned into a studio, a house, a garden, and a home for her horses, dogs, ducks, and chickens. In her meanderings through the basin valley, she became fascinated with its geology, wildlife, ancient petroglyphs, and abandoned mines-particularly clay mines. Her work grew in both size and inventiveness as she began to incorporate these influences, gathering raw materials from the land, experimenting with her own recipes, and firing them in a large kiln of her own making.For her murals, Hoback uses the wet clay as her canvas, drawing images on it with her fingers, a pen, or a trowel. Then she brushes on pigments and creates texture by scraping away or building up layers of clay. Her imagery is of animals :horses, buffalo, deer, antelope, birds, and her favorite, bears. Before it has dried, she cuts the clay slab into smaller pieces and punches holes in them, which allows them to be screw-mounted on plywood for later hanging. Then comes what she considers the best part: the firing. Hoback sees kilns as "combinations of dragon, slave, and ancient god." The result of her efforts is a unique blend of ceramic art, painting, and installation art.Living Clay is Hoback's story : her life, her process, her creations, her beautiful desert surroundings, all illustrated in full color. From an accomplisher potter she has become a singuar artist. "Hands ask, clay responds." she says. Her book is a testament to the beauty of what hands are capable of.