My mom took up painting after her 80th birthday. She is proof you can be creative at any age.

My sister loves tiny pinch pots.

Rain Dragon Studio Located in fabulous NoPo (north Portland) Portland, Oregon

About the Artist

Artist Statement

Teri Fahrendorf is a ceramic sculptor creating abstract, figurative and nature-inspired works, including pieces that combine all these. Texture provides surface interest and tactile experience. Color is a frequent focus, and some of her sculptures take advantage of the showy metallic colors that raku firing provides. Teri prefers sculpture over other art media, as pieces may be enjoyed from multiple angles both by viewing, and by touching. Teri's "Raku Shamans" and "Everyday Saints" series are unconscious reflections of the traditions and rituals of her childhood, but bring those into a modern interpretation where fewer limits are placed on experienced spirituality. Her "Moon & Saturn" series are inspired by our solar system and explore the spheres and rings one sees with planets on a large scale, as well as the tiny scale of repeating loops seen in some jewelry. The series includes small approachable sculptures that invite physical inspection, as well as large works.

Artist Bio

Teri Fahrendorf is a Portland, Oregon-based ceramic sculptor from rural Wisconsin. Teri began to shift toward her current career in 2019, after working as a craft beer brewmaster for 30 years. She founded her one-woman art business, Rain Dragon Studio, during the pandemic in 2021, and went full time in 2022. Teri's sculpture work has juried into galleries and shows in Oregon and Washington since 2021, including Portland Open Studios, Guardino Gallery (Portland, Oregon), Art at the Cave (Vancouver, Washington), Newport Visual Art Center (Newport, Oregon), and the Vancouver Art & Music Festival where she won 2nd Place in the inaugural Regional 3D Competition. Teri is a member of four guilds: Oregon Potters Association, Pacific Northwest Sculptors, Local Clay/ClayFest (Eugene, Oregon) and Clayfolk (Medford, Oregon). She has exhibited at many shows with these guilds. You can catch Teri as a Demonstration Artist at several art festivals around Oregon & SW Washington each year.

Teri has a B.B.A. in Management Information Systems from the University of Wisconsin and worked five years in I.T. near San Francisco. After attending the esteemed Siebel Institute of Brewing Technology in Chicago where she was the first woman Class President, she spent the next 30 years working as a craft beer brewmaster in the Pacific Northwest. Teri was Founder and first President of Pink Boots Society, an international scholarship-generating 501(c)3 nonprofit charity created to inspire, encourage and empower women and nonbinary in the fermented beverages industries. Teri was also an international beer judge, author and beer industry conference speaker. She loves her current career as a Ceramic Artist & Sculptor!

The day I hung up my shingle: March 3, 2022.

More about the artist:

My name is Teri Fahrendorf. I was a craft beer Brewmaster 1988-2022, when I switched careers to become a full-time ceramic artist. I am still an international beer judge, and I continue to occasionally judge beer professionally. I grew up in a small farm town north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and went to university in western Wisconsin. After college, I moved to northern California, but missed the seasons and the big trees and ferns that Oregon's rains produce. I moved to Oregon in 1990, got married to a fellow Midwesterner in 2004, and couldn't imagine living a better life than I've had. I feel blessed to live in the great Pacific Northwest. I live in the last funky neighborhood in Portland, called St Johns, and I love it there.

My ceramic art is inspired by the things in Oregon that I love: The many shades of green, the wild untamed ocean and cliffs, our famous rain, the astounding colors and textures of plants, mosses, rocks, mountains and rushing rivers. All my work is hand-built from slabs or extrusions. I have recently expanded my practice to include American-style raku, which I love for its unpredictable shiny copper and matte peacock colors.

I love walking through my north Portland neighborhood. I love texture and explore the texture of the leaves I find on my walks, and all variety of impressions on clay. My whimsical Mother Mud People sculptures were inspired by a small statue I found "purposefully abandoned" below a larch tree in Hoyt Arboretum during the pandemic. I was enchanted and created my own little people, adding textured "tattoos" all over their heads, which I create using wooden stamps and leather embossing tools.

I love color, so most of my work has a bright and cheerful tone. All of my pieces are hand-built from clay slabs, extrusions, coils or pinched. I'm inspired by Art Nouveau (1887-1918) and its near worship of nature-in-art. My favorite museum is the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art in Denver, Colorado, and if you love Art Nouveau or Art Deco it is well worth a visit.

I am still in the process of shaking out what kind of work I will focus on. For years I made hand-built dishes and platterbowls, but now I find myself wroking larger and moving into sculpture. Nearly every piece is a prototype or "maquette," as I determine which creative options work well.

All my pottery is created in my backyard studio. I work in both red and white stoneware. I source my clay and glazes locally at Georgies Ceramic & Clay. I also buy clay from Clay Art Center (Tacoma) and Seattle Pottery Supply. I recently upgraded from a mini slab-roller to a huge commercial slab roller. These help me roll out evenly thick clay slabs for a cleaner look. I spend a lot of time on the details, because art should look beautiful from any angle, whether viewed from afar or close up.

In other creative endeavors, I also paint abstracts with alcohol inks, and I "paint" moons with sand and acrylic paint. But mostly I make functional and sculptural ceramic art with stoneware clay.

In my former life I was a craft beer brewmaster, and before that a computer programmer.

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Left: When I won 2nd Place for my Raku Crow Shaman sculpture at the Vancouver Art & Music Festival.
Right: One of my favorite pieces: my blue-black abstract platterbowl.