Beacon Focus

 (Beacon Focus will be a section that shines a light on some of the extraordinary folks that live in our town.) 

Annette Corcoran in her Pacific Grove studio

           The first Beacon Focus will shine a light on one extraordinary woman, Annette Corcoran. Some of you know her as a fierce advocate for resident’s rights in Pacific Grove. This is how I came became acquainted with her.  Over the years I visited her house on a number of occasions and I learned that she was a talented ceramic artist as well. But, I never knew just how talented until I interviewed her for this piece.

            Annette Corcoran, now in her nineties, still works in her studio a couple of hours a day.  She has always been grounded in the arts and worked for many years as a commercial artist in a printing business she owned with her husband Bill.  Some fifty years ago, she decided to branch out and give ceramic arts a try. 

    She took a college ceramics class but she said never really enjoyed throwing pots or doing that type of work. Her professor recognized a talented artist when he came across one and told her she needed open her own studio. This was in the early seventies.

    Annette said she gets much of her inspiration from nature . She is an avid gardener and bird watcher. She also has done considerable travel where she learned ceramic methods from artists all over the world.  She took a special charter flight to Tibet to study the methods used there . She said China was her favorite. “You know, she said, some villages specialized in a certain kind of pottery and everyone in that place made that type of ceramics.” 

            At first it was tough to make much money doing ceramic art, she told me. She perfected her technique. She met a prominent art dealer in San Francisco who recognized immediately that Annette Corcoran was not just any artist.  After seeing her work it sounded like it was a case of “you make it and I can sell it” kind of thing.  And she did. Now she is in the private collections of people all over the world, as well as in the finest stores, galleries, and museums.     

     Annette gave me a catalogue of her famous bird collection and I knew she did teapots too. I showed her remarkable work to a friend and told her that Annette not only did birds, there was one on the cover, but teapots as well. After my friend looked slowly through the pictures, some examples are below, she sipped her tea and remarked, “Why Susan these are not just birds, and they are bird teapots!” 

     Check them out below, but try to make it to her studio which is on the annual Open Studios Art Tour, it’s free and  it takes place on October 11^th and 12^th  Her work is even more impressive in person.  It will be well worth the effort.

Ronald Kuchta, editor of American Ceramics. his article The Beautiful Birds of Annette Corcoran, wrote:

“… like these Far Eastern old masters, she explores the world of winged creature with similar tastes, with a consummate degree of craft and a passionate obsession with her natural subject matter. The results are finally manifested in very artful, coolly animated bird forms of exquisitely painted porcelain.”