For Myron Whitaker, creativity blossomed from an unexpected place. After his son left for college, he found himself seeking a new passion to fill his time. What began as a casual interest in ceramics soon evolved into a profound artistic journey, marked by a distinctive style inspired by nature’s organic forms and earthy color palettes. His love for throwing clay and large-scale creations fuels his constant exploration and growth as an artist.
Through years of dedication, he has developed a signature aesthetic, ensuring each piece is a true reflection of his personality. And that personality is pure joy mixed with a touch of whimsy, harmony and fortitude.
Myron continually challenges himself in every area of his work, testing the limits on scale, developing his own glazes, experimenting with new textures, and even moving off the wheel to create wall art. It’s evident Myron loves what he does, and it shines through in his commitment to the craft as well as his work.
In this interview, he shares his journey, inspirations and the joy he finds in pushing the boundaries of his craft.
Q&A with Myron:
How did your journey into ceramics begin?
My son left to go to college. I was a single parent. I got bored, so I took some classes and found out I loved ceramics. I went to community college just to learn how to create bowls, coffee mugs…just the basics. Two years later, I started doing my own creations and I left the ceramics of normal household wear for doing this, and I’ve just grown since then.
How did you develop your unique style?
I love nature. I love being out in the woods. My work is very organic. It’s all about shapes in the wood, the leaf edge, tree limbs, branches, and the color palettes of being in the wood is all in my work. I’m not much on pastel colors. I like really earthy colors––a really nice, bold color palette.
I create all my own glaze formulations, and they’re just done to be me. So when you look at my work, you see my personality as weird as it is, but it’s my personality.
What do you love most about the creative process?
The throwing. The creation of it. There’s a freedom in throwing clay and getting to manipulate it. And I love large-scale pieces. I like being able to push the limits of what clay can do.
I just hope people see how much fun I have when I create––that it comes through in my work that I’m really enjoying what I do. That’s the biggest thing for me.
How do you keep yourself challenged?
There’s no end to it. I don’t get bored. I can just keep moving from one thing to another, and keep developing and growing. Every year I change and add more in terms of work and new directions. I criticize and critique my own work constantly and I learn from that. I just keep going, and try to keep developing to fix my problems and issues.
How did your wall art come to be?
My mind thinks round because I’m a potter. I had to look at my work through a different lens. I basically cut a pattern out of an eight-by-eight tile with a hole in it and walked around, holding it to all my pieces. So if you look at these pieces, you see little windows of my vessels. That’s how I come up with the majority of this––it’s through little windows or like little photographs of what I do on my vessels.
What inspires your compositions?
I use the stone to give me the inspiration to create the piece. If you look really close, you don’t really notice what some of the materials are, like coyote toenails. They’re really unique and different. So, most don’t notice it in the composition until I tell them what it is. And these materials are used to symbolize things. Like one of my vessels, the composition is made to look like a warrior with a blanket wrapped around him.
On my large pieces, I pick a stone and I design a piece from that. That gives me the shape, form and colors. The embellishments––the textures and patterns––are used to finish it. I handpick all my stones and I’m picking for what I see. When I see a stone, I see a piece. So I use them to work from.
What keeps you coming back to the Celebration of Fine Art?
It’s an incredible show. It has introduced me to some of the best people–– my friends. I have so many friends that I’ve made here including other artists, clients and collectors that I see all year long. We talk and get together regularly. The Celebration is an incredible spot for an artist to grow and develop their work. I’ve been here 16 years now, so it’s been a long-term run, and I’m having the time of my life.
