My pottery studio and gallery are located on the first floor of this brick building in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin. It was built to house carts and horses for the H.C. Christians Company butter and egg business that was established in 1882. When the wind blows really hard, I still find oats that have shaken loose from a grain storage room upstairs. Artist Susan Messer and I bought the building in 1999 and began to remodel it for our studios; the pottery and gallery opened for business in 2002. I work with stoneware and a little porcelain, mostly on the wheel, although I also like coiling and make medium sized vessels and some sculptural pieces with that process. My pots are fired to cone 10 - 11 (about 2400 degrees F) in gas reduction.
I sell my work at the RW Guild Gallery in New York, NY, the Abel Contemporary Gallery in Stoughton, WI, The Racine Art Museum Store, Racine, WI, and from my own gallery here in Johnson Creek. My studio is one of the stops on what have become popular events; the Clay Collective Pottery Tour and Sale in the spring, and the Earth, Wood and Fire Artist Tour in the fall. During most of the year I do not have regular gallery hours, but I am open whenever I am in the studio. If you wish to browse the work in the gallery, please stop by or call or email me to make sure I am in the shop (see contact page for information).
I make functional pots, coiled vessels and some sculptural pieces. With the wheel work I have recently focused on using wood ash glazes and clay slips, with a particular interest in the irregularities of texture, depth, and color; the way in which they are dull or glassy, thin or pooled, and in how they obscure or reveal the clay underneath. During the throwing process, I pay particular attention to the rhythms and surface textures left in the clay, aware of how they will react to the glaze, and hope to evoke some of the movement of the wheel and the plasticity of the material in the fired piece.
I also enjoy the process of making forms with coils and over the last 14 years have been making some medium sized vessels that are inspired largely by African pottery and to a lesser extent Neolithic Chinese pots. Many of these are stained with iron oxide and coated with a clay and wood ash slip.
Bio
Rick Hintze was born in 1944 in Peoria, Illinois. He received a B.A. in Art from Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, an M.A. in Art History from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, and an M.F.A. in Ceramics from the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. After teaching ceramics and sculpture at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, during the 1990's, he moved to Wisconsin to establish his studio in Johnson Creek and opened his gallery in the fall of 2002. Over the years he has received numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Council Artist Project Grant, and an Award of Excellence from the American Craft Council. His work is in the collections of the Racine Art Museum, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, Southeastern Louisiana University, Ripon College, Kirkwood Community College, The China Zisha Museum in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, and various regional and national private collections.