Kirk LyttleSt Paul, Minnesota

Statement

I'd like my pots to appear as though they were knocked off on a whim; the drawings having been done for my personal amusement. If some of them have acquired an aura that transcends these inauspicious beginnings I'd like it if this were attributed to the mysterious atmosphere of the wood fired kiln.


Biography

Kirk lives and works in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is an award-winning illustrator, world traveler, bicycling enthusiast, and attentive nature observer.

Kirk was born and schooled in Seattle during the cold war. In the summer his mother would haul him and his siblings back to the family homestead in Taylors Falls, Minnesota. It would seem he had one foot in the twentieth century and the other in the 19th. Kirk attended the University of Washington where he drew editorial cartoons for the U.W. Daily. That led to his career but he continued taking classes in clay, most notably was a throwing class he took from Patti Warashina. He became a newspaper artist based at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. For years Kirk would work in the clay studio before going to his night job at the paper. He, along with his wife and potter Jil Franke, would fire with Linda Christianson for the next twenty some years.

More often than not Kirk does whimsical drawings on his pots using slips and black underglaze. His work has been slowly evolving to enhance the contrast of slip to raw clay… the work is fired with red pine in a double-chambered bourry box kiln with a relatively light application of salt, kept below Cone 11. His work is unpretentious and brings a heartfelt joie de vivre in dark times.

Kirk has lovingly claimed that Linda (Christianson) and Jeff Oestreich have been his biggest supporters.