Rick Dillingham

Rick Dillingham was born in Lake Forest, Illinois on November 13, 1952. He moved to Albuquerque in 1971 to study at the University of New Mexico. While he was a student there he worked at the campus' Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. In 1974 he curated and wrote the catalog for the Maxwell Museum's exhibition, Seven families in Pueblo pottery.[1] After graduating with his BFA, Dillingham went on to Claremont Graduate School of Scripps College, where he studied with Paul Soldner.[2] After completing his Master of Fine Art he returned to New Mexico where he lived the rest of his life. In 1994, shortly after Dillingham died from complications with AIDS,[3] the University of New Mexico press released the book Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery, an expansion of the Seven families in Pueblo pottery catalog.

Dillingham's experience studying and repairing Native American pots influenced his own creations. He was also influenced by teacher Hal Riegger and artist Beatrice Wood.[4] He is known for pioneering a process in which he hand-built a vessel, fired it, deliberately broke it into shards, painted both sides of the shard randomly, refired and reassembled the individual pieces and finally added additional metallic decoration. Dillingham's work is included in such prestigious collections as the Los Angeles Museum of Art, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.