American, (1924–2015)
Eunice Adams Prieto was the youngest of two sisters who grew up on a farm outside of Spencerport, New York, on the Erie Canal. Though small in stature, her nickname was “Amazon Adams,” as her capacity for hard work of all kinds carried her through life’s challenges. On the farm as a young girl she drove tractors and combines. Eunice attended Alfred University in New York, where she met her future Spanish-born husband, Antonio Prieto. They settled in the Bay Area where she taught ceramics at a number of community sites and college programs, while raising four sons and exhibiting her ceramics frequently. After having her sons, in 1968, she earned her M.F.A. at California College of the Arts and Crafts (CCAC).
The Prieto’s lived on the Mills College, Oakland, California campus where their home was a center for a community of artists, as her husband was head of the ceramics program. Though ceramics was her life-long primary art form, Eunice also enameled and painted. Eunice was a respected potter and she took over her husband’s classes at Mills for a while after he died in 1967. In the 1970s, Eunice and her sons relocated to West Oakland where they established Prieto Studios, which still exists today. Eunice later remarried and lived in the high basin range of western Nevada and continued with ceramics and watercolor.
She and Anthony had four sons; the youngest is Mark and is currently a well-known potter. Another of their sons, Esteban, is a glass artist.
Eunice made ceramics and threw until she was 91 years old. She grew up on a farm and "had amazing capacity of energy", Mark Prieto said.
Your current search criteria is: Exhibitions is "Lighting the Fire: Ceramics Education in the American West".
