Ceramics artist blends human, natural worlds

David Regan is at home in the ceramics studio.

It’s his place of “work,” if you want to call it that, but more importantly it’s where he creates with clay.

The Kalispell resident and assistant ceramics professor at Flathead Valley Community College is best known for his sculptural pieces that often highlight the interplay between humans and the natural world. Regan’s clay forms frequently embody the shape of animals — pig, deer or livestock, for example — and are embellished with painstakingly intricate designs across their surfaces.

It’s a labor of love that can take him hundreds of hours to complete.

It’s time he uses to meditate; to give form to the ideas knocking around in his head.

“I realized that clay isn’t just about form. It’s also about the surface,” Regan said. “The difference between drawing on a flat piece of paper versus drawing on a three-dimensional object is really interesting because three-dimensional objects exist in our space with us, where two dimensional art …. is like a window that you’re looking through to a different time and space. But when you draw on a three-dimensional object, it fuses those two things together. It challenges you on more than one level. That is endlessly fascinating to me.”

The 53-year-old artist discovered ceramics at an early age. In the sixth grade, the potter’s wheel was a means of escaping gym class, but quickly became something much more.

“It’s always been my interest and passion,” he said. “When I heard that you could pursue it as a career, much to my dad’s chagrin, I decided to go and get my bachelor’s degree in ceramic arts.”

After earning his degree, Regan completed a residency at Helena’s Archie Bray Foundation — a ceramic arts center that draws creatives from around the world, many of whom land in northwest Montana following their studies for proximity’s sake. It’s how Regan, a native of Buffalo, New York, also found himself in the Flathead Valley.

While his work has been exhibited in major metropolitan hubs around the country, Regan’s piece, “Water Rights” is featured in the Beyond Craft: The Art of Ceramics show currently on display at Kalispell’s Hockaday Museum of Art.

“It’s all about the path of a river,” Regan said. “It starts in a high mountain lake and turns into a bigger stream and finally turns into a river and it goes down into the city where there are people and garbage and dead cows and dams.”

The sculpture echoes themes in his real life — Regan and his family just moved into a home that sits near a well that sources its water from a high mountain lake.

“They’re time-consuming pieces so if the idea doesn’t have some relevance to what’s actually going on in my world, it doesn’t interest me as much,” he added.

Regan’s process is split in two parts: crafting the clay form and then drawing on its surface.

“Most of them are made from thrown parts,” Regan said of his ceramic sculptures. “I use the potter’s wheel to make shapes, not pots, and I let those shapes dry to what we call leather hard , which is this really wonderful state where the clay still has moisture in it, but it stiffens so you can reorient those same forms — turn them sideways, cut them.”

Once the body parts are thrown, shaped and attached together, Regan will bisque fire the piece and then begin drawing.

“To me, its a meditation,” he said. “When I sit down and work in the studio, a lot of people say, ‘oh that’s just so much work.’ … But to me, that’s where I want to be. I’d rather do that than almost anything else.”

To see Regan’s work on display, visit the Hockaday at 302 Second Ave. E. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday or 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday before the exhibit closes on April 7. Anyone in the community is eligible to sign up for a ceramics course at FVCC — no prerequisites are required. For more information, visit www.fvcc.edu or contact the admissions office at 756-3848.

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss may be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.