I've been a potter since 1972, when I began the first of 5 summers studying with Marguerite Wildenhain at her studio, Pond Farm, in Guerneville, CA. I built a studio in the basement of my parents house in Chevy Chase, MD, that same year and began to sell my work.
The experience of working every day in my own space, with a disciplined, but self-determined, routine, and selling my work to an excited audience was transformative, and deeply rewarding. Just a few years earlier in high school in Oakland, CA I never would have guessed that I would be a potter, nor that I would be living at the age of 23 a relatively radical, and independent life. It was and remains a complete miracle.
Many summers of my life have been spent rock climbing and mountaineering in the high-altitude environment of the American West, whose arid clarity affected and became, perhaps, the most elementary structure of my work. I rarely use exterior glazes, and favor a dry, textured surface impregnated with color, less a glaze than a patina.
In this context, my work is more related to the Neolithic than it is to the post-glaze ceramic art of much of the world, and as such leans more toward an alliance with subliminal experience, and the surreal, than upon known idiomatic, or expected representations.
EDUCATION
1972-78 Pond Farm Workshops, Guerneville, CA, Marguerite Wildenhain, director
1971 Hanover College, Indiana, BA, Theology and Literature
TEACHING
1973-2017 Sidwell Friends School, Washington, DC, adjunct instructor in art
2009 Hood College, Frederick, MD, adjunct instructor in art history
1984-2000 Maryland State Arts Council, Artist-in-Education Program, resident artist
1991 Deep Springs College, Deep Springs, CA, adjunct instructor in art
1973-1974 Montgomery College, Rockville, MD, adjunct instructor in art
EXHIBITIONS/SHOWS
2020 Monocacy River Pottery Group: A Conscious Collective, NCECA 2020 Concurrent Exhibition
2020 Cumberland Valley Art Exhibition, WCMFA, Hagerstown, MD, (also 2018, 2019)
2019 53rd Annual National Drawing and Small Sculpture Show, Del Mar College, TX
2019 Twin Cups, Missouri Western State University, St. Joseph, MO
2009 Montgomery College Art Gallery, Rockville, MD, group show
2007 College of Southern Maryland, La Plata, MD, one-person show, Surface Tension
2005 Harford Community College, MD, NCECA, 2005, Concurrent Exhibition
2002 Smithsonian Craft Show, Washington, DC, participant (also, 1994 and 1997)
2002 UC, San Bernardino, “Ripples: Marguerite Wildenhain and her Students”, group show
1984 Washington County Museum of Fine Art, Hagerstown, MD, one-person show
1976 Havre de Grace Art Show, Havre de Grace, MD, “Best in Show”
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/ GRANTS/ AWARDS
2007 NCECA Special Session Speaker, “Notes from the Paleolithic Project,” CAA, NYC
2002 Maryland State Arts Council, Individual Artist Award
1999 Maryland State Arts Council, Individual Artist Award
1999 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
LECTURES/ PUBLICATIONS/CONFERENCES
2023 Cumberland Valley Show, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (also 2018, 2019, and 2020)
2023 NCECA, Concurrent Exhibition, "Texture as Subliminal Experience"
2017 “Who is Marguerite Wildenhain,” NCECA 2017, Portland, OR, lecture
2010 Critical: Santa Fe, ceramic art conference, Santa Fe, NM, organizing team member
2009 “An Incident in Class,” Studio Potter, Winter, 2009
2008 “Hunt Prothro: Surface Tension," Ceramics Monthly magazine, March, 2008
2008 “Accommodations of Desire,” NCECA 2008, Pittsburgh, PA, lecture
2007 “Memoir of Marguerite: A Student Recollection”, in Marguerite Wildenhain and the
Bauhaus, South Bear Press, ed. Dean and Gerry Schwartz
2006 “Notes from the Paleolithic Project: Transience and Singularity,” NCECA, 2006, lecture
1986 “Rob Barnard at Anton Gallery, WDC,” The New Arts Examiner
1980 “Marguerite Wildenhain, Sustained Presence,” American Craft, September, 1980
Who is Marguerite Wildenhain
Recent Commission by Eleni Valasis. Images and Voiceover by Artist, Marian McLaughlin, Text by Hunt Prothro