Stan Welsh – Red Lodge Clay Center

Stan WelshSan Jose, California


Red Lodge Clay Center Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2015

Stan Welsh was born in 1951 and grew up in Southern California in the town of Claremont where he first met Paul Soldner at Scripps College in 1968. In 1974 Stan earned his B.F.A. degree from Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City Missouri and in 1978 he earned his M.F.A. degree from Alfred University in New York State.

Stan Has been a professor in the School of Art and Art History at San Jose State University since 1981. In 2005, Stan recieved the “Arts Council Silcon Valley Artist Fellowship Award” in 1990 he recieved a “California Arts Council Award” and in 1986 he received a “National Endownment for the Arts Award”. Stan’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally and his work is represented in many important permanent collections including: Fred Marer collection, Ca., Oakland Museum, Ca., San Jose Museum, Ca., Daum Museum, Mo., Ceramic Research Center A.S.U. Art Museum, Az. And the Sandy Besser Collection, N.M. Stan currently lives with his wife and daughter on 3 acres of property in the costal mountains of Santa Cruz California.

“In my recent work I shift the focus to the landscape in an attempt to create a context in which to view the human form. By placing the human form into a picture frame I hope to develop a sense of location and encourage a psychological narrative.”

My studio is the a place where I go to make the world slow down a little bit, it’s the place where I can negotiate ideas at my own pace and filter the complexities of life in a way that makes it more possible for me to understand the world that I live in. For me the process of making art is a combination of objectivity, irrationality and subjectivity and the finished work represents a celebration of this process of inquiry.