Stephen Fisher

Stephen Fisher grew up in Massachusetts. His earliest inspiration came from his great-grandfather Charles Collens’ watercolors of the landscape and architecture of New England. Charles Collens was foremost an architect and his architectural firm designed many public and religious buildings in the northeast including The Cloisters, which is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Riverside Church.  

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In 1978, Fisher graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine with a B.A. in Studio Art. After graduation, he sailed from Petersburg, Alaska to Cape Cod, Massachusetts on-board the 73’ charter sailboat WINDIGO. He took along a set of pastels and paper, and the landscape drawings that he created during this ten-month trip were displayed in a solo exhibition at Bowdoin College in 1980.

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Fisher began working with clay in 1981. In 1982, he spent two-week at Gerry William’s studio in Dunbarton, New Hampshire where he participated in a wood firing for the first time. Gerry was a potter and founder of The Studio Potter Magazine. In 1983, Fisher moved to Sun Valley, Idaho to study ceramics at The Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities. As a resident assistant, he helped maintain the center’s studio and kilns including the two-chamber wood kiln. He also built a high-fire test kiln with instruction from resident artist, Dan Doak. This was Fisher’s first introduction to kiln construction, and he has built 6 additional kilns since then.  In 1987, Fisher received an M.F.A. in Ceramics from The University of Texas at San Antonio. In graduate school, he also studied printmaking and sculpture, and was the technician in the university’s ceramics studio.

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Fisher has taught art and ceramics at Kimball Union Academy in Meridian, New Hampshire and Palo Alto Community College in San Antonio, Texas. Currently he teaches ceramics, three-dimensional design, sculpture and advanced studio at The College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho. He has received professional development grants from The College of Idaho and The Idaho Commission on the Arts. Fisher’s ceramic sculpture and pottery have been included in national and regional exhibitions in Maine, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Illinois, Alabama, California, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.