top of page

Ceramic Artists

 Farraday Newsome & Jeff Reich

 

Interview by Valerie Fair

 

AOTCE:  Hello Farraday and Jeff

Farraday Newsome: Hi Valerie

Jeff Reich:  I just flew in from Detroit and I’m glad to be home.

AOTCE: Thanks for joining the conversation.  Could you tell our readership what brought you into the arts and please tell them exactly what you do?

Farraday: Many of my family members were artists, i.e.  my dad, grandmother, aunts, uncles, etc.  I decided to do something completely different and go into the sciences (rebel, lol).  Once I was working in the sciences I took a ceramics class for fun and loved it.  I eventually went back to college and got a Masters in Art with a Ceramic emphasis, set up my own studio and have never looked back.  My family thought this was all quite hilarious – no escape!!  I work with terra cotta clay to make vessels and sculptures, all with very painterly glazed surfaces.  I also paint and write.

Jeff:  I grew up with an engineering Dad who wanted me to take courses in math, physics, probability and statistics in high school.  It wasn’t until college that I took courses in art again (since junior high) and loved it.  I gravitated to clay and have now had a ceramics studio since 1984.  I work mostly with stoneware clay.  I make abstract sculptures with areas of abstract, textural glazing and areas of desert plant botanical sgraffito.  I also now paint on canvas with acrylics and oils.

AOTCE:  Farraday and Jeff, do you think as an artist you tap into your creative mind and it can manifest in many ways, i.e. the fact that you both also paint and write?

Farraday:  Absolutely.  I find I can express different ideas and develop them to a greater degree with different media.  I think the subconscious is a great well of visual and dreamlike imagery.  While painting I can develop certain ideas in more depth and detail.  In writing I can translate imagery into words without the physical limitation of material.

AOTCE:  In what way has architecture and the natural garden botanicals, of Arizona in particular, influenced your work and in what way?  Does the fact that many people come to art after trying something else, speak at all to the power of doing something that I innate and creative?

Jeff:  I am a distance runner, focusing on marathons.  While running I find that my mind can wander into a creative place.  Similarly, while gardening in our native-landscaped property or hiking in the local desert preserves, I get ideas for botanical drawings.  In addition, my high school math classes, especially geometry, which has given me a love of architecture and in return has influenced my sense of design.

 

 

Farraday:  Yes, that is a good point.  I think we humans are creative by nature.  It has probably gotten the human species, for better or worse, to where we are now!  I think we are hard-wired to problem-solve, and creativity is problem-solving and looking at ideas from different angles while searching for the new.  As an artist, I like to problem-solve aesthetic ideas.

Jeff:  I agree with Farraday.  I would add that I have a need to create and I am fascinated that we can actualize an idea and make it a three-dimensional object in the real world.  I find that painting has allowed me to do that too with color more directly and immediately.  Architecture has influenced my work from a young age since my older brother was an architect.  I was intrigued as to how architecture can influence how we feel about a space and lead us around that space according to its design, color, and light.  My work incorporates these ideas on a smaller scale through geometric clay sculptures.  The desert flora has attracted me since I moved to Arizona from the Detroit area in 1980.  How these plants can survive high heat and winter freezes amazes me.  I incorporate these thorny botanical, into my drawing onto clay.

 

 

Jeff:  "While running I find my mind can wander into a creative place."

Photograph taken by the artist Jeff Reich

Every artist comes to art in a new and often different way.  It is up to each person to find their own path, to be clear and exact, to ask themselves the question, what is my life's work and what will be the most fulfilling.  Will I let family tradition, finances or other circumstances decide for me?  It is self discovery that leads to fulfillment and purpose.  Farraday Newsome & Jeff Reich both were on different paths before each decided to dare and become the artists they were meant to be.  Let them take you on the journey which led each to become great ceramic artists.  vf

  • Farraday Newsome
bottom of page