07/26 Featured Artist: Ann Mendershausen

Ann grew up in rural Vermont doing the things country kids do—taking care of animals, riding horses, swimming in brooks and ponds, roaming the hills.  In 1959, after high school, she went to Bennington College, also in Vermont.  She loved college even though it was challenging and scary.  In her second semester she enrolled in a ceramics class taught by Stanley Rosen.  He was an inspirational teacher and Ann was hooked.  She took it continuously until graduation but was not an art major.

In graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley she was able to study with Peter Voulkos, who is credited with the “California Revolution” in ceramics. That movement elevated ceramics from (“mere”) craft to “Art”.  While her husband toiled at his PhD at UC San Diego Ann was befriended by Rhoda Lopez, a clay artist nearby.  Being able to work in Rhoda’s studio and becoming her assistant was a privilege and a huge learning opportunity.

After a baby and two year long stints living in Germany the family returned to California, to the small foothill town of Mariposa, near Yosemite National Park.  Ann tried to keep her hands in clay by using local materials.  In fact, they built a round, adobe house with local clay and adobe bricks from Fresno.  That counts too! One just needed to dig a hole to find red clay; not the purest, but cheap. Using hand dug clay and a primitive hand-built kiln creations emerged. Results were on the crude side and not great.  But she did not stop. 

In 1976 actual jobs began to happen.  They secured temporary teaching jobs at the Putney School back in Vermont.  Ann taught ceramics for the first time and enjoyed the convenience of a “real” studio with water and electric wheels.  During summer breaks from Putney they worked in Yosemite National Park on backcountry trails with high school volunteers.  This led her to what became a ten year stint as a seasonal interpretive ranger.  In the late 80’s she left the park to take up an adjunct position at Merced Community College teaching ceramics.

Teaching clay classes issued in a few decades of creativity and productivity and also some success in art shows and sales.  During that time Ralph too became interested in clay and together they built a functional, modern studio on the property.  Beginning then and thereafter, Ann took many workshops with clay artists of note including Rudi Autio, Pat Crabb, Michael Lucero, Brian Ransom, Paul Soldner and Patti Warashina.  She is deeply indebted as well to her many “clay buddies” who have influenced and supported her work.

In 2013, on the urging of Allen Moe, a clay buddy, Ann and Ralph came to Guemes to visit and later that year bought a round cabin in the forest.  The couple became full time a decade later after selling the Mariposa home and studio.  It looked as if ceramics was not going to survive the severe downsizing they performed.  Thanks to Sue Roberts, however, and her wonderful studio classes and her students, Ann is still “messing with clay” and has met new “clay buddies”. She has a kiln again but much smaller, and the pieces have gotten smaller as well.  Some of those are included below.

Ann has had a lifelong love of clay: its millennia of tradition, its transformative and magical qualities, its feel, its power, and its memory.  She hopes to continue enjoying it as long as her wrists hold out.  Currently her work is sculptural, whimsically narrative and often a statement about political, social and environmental realities.

In 2017, while incapacitated by illness, she wrote a small book Fifty Years of Clay which is available at the Island’s wonderful little library.

If someone would like to visit her studio on Guemes she can be contacted by email at: ralphr@sti.net