Coy Quakenbush

Coy Q Artworks
Clay

It seems just a few years ago. That boy walking along the banks of the creek on the edge of his grandpa’s property, starts digging bare toes into the mud at the edge of the water, when he stops to check how cold the water is. As he watches the snails make trails in the underwater mud, he is thinking of how excited his friends will be with the arrowhead he just found beside the trail to the creek crossing. He is wondering how long ago did the Indians lose it there. As he meanders slowly back home before supper, thousands of questions beginning with “why,” rolled around in his head, waiting for answers.

Stretching your mind ahead 60 + years, many of those thousands of questions along with many, many more that materialized through those years have finally found answers. Many venues, from classrooms, conferences, instructors, workshops, knowledgeable individuals, historians, masters of art in various fields, have answered all of the “whys”. Now I am in the “Make It Happen Stage” of my life. What you are witnessing is a culmination of clay hand building and firing techniques from a couple of thousand years ago, mixed with a lot of finesse, to produce some amazing artwork.

Who knew the same clay that little boy wiggled his toes through many years ago in a creek in central North Carolina, would be a life long interest to him as he moved through life. I still own a piece of that creek and still dig clay there to make some of my pottery and my water based colors I use to paint on canvases as well as my southwest designs.

My wish is that you will enjoy my artwork as much as I do.

Artist Bio

To introduce myself, I am Coy Quakenbush. I am presently living on the land I grew up on.
I am a self-taught art pottery maker, painter, sculptor, and all around clay person. I use clay building techniques from the turn of the millennium. I have my own studio and recently new, CoyQ Artworks Gallery, at my home/studio, in a semi-rural area in central NC, USA. I started my art journey about 1997. I was looking for a hobby to pass the time in the evenings before bedtime. So much for the hobby side when I happened on a bag of clay and a video tape about the potters in Mata Ortiz, Mexico. Now, I not only make fabulous Mata Ortiz Pottery, but also, I do sculptures, paintings, Raku pottery, pit-fired pottery, and epoxy decorated pieces, to name some of the other art directions I travel. I have just recently started investigating the use of high voltage wood burning incorporated into my artwork.