Diptych: Fall From a Windy Height

Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Missouri since 1992, Clarke received his M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa in 1990. He has received the Kennedy Center Fellowship for Teachers for the Arts, the John Eckert Memorial Award for Ceramics, the Artist Resource Grant, the Summer Research Award Fellowship Award and the Research Grant from The University of Iowa Fine Arts Council. His works appear in public and private collections in Japan, Australia and the United States. Themes involving a recording of touch, gesture and energy are repeated in Clarke?s pieces. He believes the viewer can draw a personal interpretation if the artist?s primary concern remains rooted in the recording of the touch. Clarke states that his ?technique amounts to wishing the work well as it moves through the process of forming, articulation of the surface and firing. I find it?s like raising my son; I just put my hands on the work silently encouraging it to be good, be good.