Patti Warashina

Shadow Thru the Clouds, From the White Figure Series, 1988, Earthenware, Underglaze, Mixed Media, 20 x 18 x 18 inches. Encased in a permanent plexiglas case. Retail Value: $10,000.

Patti Warashina is one of the Pacific Northwest’s most distinctive ceramic artists. Born in Spokane and based in Seattle, Patti spent many years teaching at the University of Washington while developing a body of work known for its wit, surrealism, and sharp observation of human behavior. For Patti, the human figure becomes a kind of visual diary, a way to record and reflect on everyday life, personal experience, and the often absurd ways that people behave. She has described herself as an obsessive observer of current events, which frequently enter her work only to be transformed, exaggerated, and folded into her own imagined narratives.

This piece comes from her White Figures series, in which mysterious human encounters unfold without giving us an obvious explanation. Here, the figures look upward and appear almost to dance or celebrate beneath friendly “shadows” in the clouds. Patti recalls making the work during a period of deep tension between the United States and Russia. Rather than illustrating that conflict literally, she twists it into something more ambiguous and strangely hopeful. The figures seem to respond to the sky with curiosity, wonder, even celebration.

That tension between seriousness and absurdity is at the heart of Patti’s work. She gives us something immediately recognizable - the human body, a gesture, a shared moment - but places it in a world just strange enough to make us reconsider what we are seeing and, perhaps, the behavior of the world around us.