Jacksonville Review – November 2025
PHIL FISHWICK remembers applying for a job as an artist when he was about 11 years old, living in Los Angeles. A TV program on the making of animated films intrigued him, and he spent the summer between the fifth and sixth grade drawing hundreds of images for an animated adventure. Imagining that this project could launch an art career, he sent some of his drawings across town to Walter Lantz (think: Woody Woodpecker) with a job request. Lantz didn’t offer a job but did offer a studio tour.
Despite this disappointment, Phil’s interest in drawing continued to dominate his artistic interests, until his last year of college, when a pre-graduation credit audit for a degree in art education revealed that he needed a class in three-dimensional art. (Drawing, you see, is always a 2-D art form, as is painting, unless one uses a lot of paint.) While pondering his choices, he thought, “Everyone down in the basement pottery studio seems to enjoy that class, and I don’t mind getting dirty. I’ll try that.” It took only one session with clay, and he was hooked. He reflects, “Clay is a medium that has continued to enthrall me ever since! I took more classes after graduation and soon bought my own equipment. Then came a move to southern Oregon.”
He settled in Medford, where he discovered a group of other potters that had recently formed Clayfolk, a community of like-minded ceramists with whom he could share problems, successes, and potlucks! (“Did I mention,” he asks, “that potters also tend to be good cooks?) He also loved the idea that Clayfolk sponsors workshops with local, national, and international clay artists who share their expertise and philosophies. So, he began attending these workshops to expand his knowledge and involvement with clay. “It’s like a graduate school for clay artists,” he notes. “To sum up the soul of Clayfolk, I would say the group is all about sharing.”
And that places Phil Fishwick squarely in “the soul of Clayfolk.” This year marks Clayfolk’s 50th anniversary—and a half-century that Phil has been sharing his talents and personality with Clayfolk members and other potters. Not incidentally, he was also a force for clay art at Rogue Community College for nearly a decade.
Phil now lives in McMinnville, where he sells his clay art in The Gallery at Ten Oaks. But he continues to be an active member of Clayfolk here in Southern Oregon. Currently, he works mostly in porcelain clay, using incised and impressed designs. And what about the future? He says, “I don’t know where it will all go next because clay is such a susceptible medium, just waiting to go off in a new direction if you are willing to take it there!”
You can see Phil Fishwick’s work, along with that of some 70 other clay artists at Clayfolk’s 50th-Anniversary Fall Show and Sale, November 21, 22, and 23, 2025, at the Medford Armory.
Robert L. Johnson is a member of Clayfolk. For more info: https://www.clayfolk.org/