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First of all, thank you for your interest in Leland's Raku Pottery and Sculpture.
Leland Hall
Over 20-years ago, Leland began working as a potter's assistant for master potter Bill Kennedy. His duties included: mopping floors, mixing clay, gathering fuel for two giant llama and sheep dung pit kilns, and anything else as needed. Mr. Kennedy offered to teach Leland to throw, but the contemporary masks of Mr. Kennedy's lovely wife, Lynn, a master sculptor in her own right, is what really peaked his interest. So after learning how to build an armature for slab built masks from Mrs. Kennedy, Leland ventured forward into his life in clay.
He began creating Native American images with clay based on his studies of the photography of Edward Sheriff Curtis, the great photographer and ethnographer from before the turn of the 20th century. The faces of Red Cloud, Geronimo and Sitting Bull, among others, were immortalized in clay by Leland's talented and creative hands, pit fired, and embellished with horsetail hair wigs, authentic period beads of glass, bone and metal, and feathers, furs, fabrics and leather. He submitted the masks to local Central Oregon fine art galleries, and they were received well by both the gallery owners and the public. Leland expanded his market to include fine art galleries in Portland and also the Oregon Coast, and was quite successful.
Eight years ago he sat at a potter's wheel for the first time. "It was love at first centering." He thought about pit firing the pottery, but he needed a complete change and a great book on Raku by Robert Piepenburg was the perfect catalyst. Leland had worked as a wild land firefighter for several years, so the smoke and fire was not only "fun and fascinating", but he loved the spectacular colors and variegations created by the Raku process and glazes. He attempted to Raku fire several life-sized Native American masks, but unfortunately the wide flanges of the masks were the very worst configuration to withstand the torturous thermal shock and few survived. However the pottery he was now throwing was perfect for the fires, and hundreds of pots later he still loves his work and best of all it sells.
Leland's pottery and sculpture is being internationally collected. For the serious buyer, we believe that his body of work will only increase in value over time. He is a dedicated artist; forever learning, evolving and creating.
"Clay is my life!"
From Leland
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the following:
Paul Soldner, Robert Piepenburg and all the great Raku potters who have fearlessly tread where no potter had gone before.
All the other Raku potters and teachers who so tirelessly offer their workshops and literature to guys like me.
The Japanese Zen Tea Masters of some four or five hundred years ago.
My parents who encouraged me, from the time I was little, to be creative.
My sixth grade elementary school crafts teacher.
The first guy or gal (I'd bet it was a gal) who probably accidentally dropped some dried out clay thing they had made into a cooking fire and discovered that it got hard and waterproof.
Bill and Lynn Kennedy
And lastly, but mostly, thanks to Judy, for all her tireless computer and marketing labor, housework, love, and the countless millions of other difficult things she puts up with living with a working potter, and without whom none of this would have been possible.
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