NEHMA | Collection

Mark Prieto

American, b. 1949

Bottle
2014

Stoneware
23.875 x 2.625 x 2.625 in.
Gift of the artist
2021.20

Prieto made the nearly two-foot-tall Bottle to fire in a friend’s new anagama kiln in Nevada. Though he was not generally creating work like this in 2014, he produced a series for that firing with the idea that it would take up less floor space. Prieto fashioned an extruder that formed the bottom two-thirds of the piece. Then he threw a “neck” and carved it to attach as the top third of the finished work.

Mark is the son of Antonio and Eunice Prieto—well-known and respected midcentury Bay Area ceramists who taught at Mills College in Oakland. He is a lifelong clay artist who sat on his mother’s lap at her wheel and watched his father throw for endless hours. In 1968, Mark began his formal training at California College of Arts and Crafts with Viola Frey, making sure his wheel was next to hers. (See Frey’s 1950s Cookie Jar and Bowl; 1966 Planter; and the large Doris figure.) Mark’s parents were best friends and colleagues with Nora Eccles Treadwell and her husband Walt. With her financial assistance, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970, where he studied ceramics with Wayne Higby (see Higby’s 1970s Untitled bowl), receiving his BFA in ceramics in 1972. He continues to work as a studio potter, making both sculptural and functional pieces.

Billlie Sessions, PhD.

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bottles