TRUDY CHIDDIX

I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and discovered ceramics when I was an undergraduate art major at the University of California Santa Barbara. Clay has been my passion and pursuit ever since. After graduating from UCSB I stayed in Santa Barbara for a number of years working as a functional potter and part-time ceramics teacher. I also organized workshops for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, directed the Santa Barbara County Arts Festival and founded and ran the Palm Park Craft Center for the Santa Barbara City Recreation Department. Eight years after receiving my BFA I returned to school and earned a Masters Degree in Art Education from San Francisco State University. While in graduate school I met my husband, Jim Chiddix, an East Coast transplant living in Hawaii. After my graduation I joined him there to begin our life together.

I have continued to develop my artistic skills by attending workshops at institutions including Watershed, Haystack, Penland, Anderson Ranch, Honolulu Academy of Art, Pilchuck, Urban Glass and the Art Students League of New York. While living in Manhattan I spent endless hours in museums and galleries and also studied glass as an artistic medium. For the last 20 years much of my work has combined glass with clay.

We came to Evergreen, Colorado, in 1986 and have lived here part-time ever since. We consider Evergreen our primary home, but have lived part of each year in other locations. Since 2005 we have split our time between San Francisco and Evergreen. In San Francisco I work in a converted warehouse that provides studio space for 100 artists, while my Evergreen studio is located beside a mountain stream in the forest.

My arts community participation includes serving on the board at AMOCA, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, in Pomona CA, as well as the board at ACGA, the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California. I have attended more than 30 annual conferences of NCECA, the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts. In 2022 at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, I was inducted into the International Academy of Ceramics, a branch of UNESCO.

I was honored by this recognition and was thrilled to meet fascinating ceramic artists from around the world.