About
Born in St Charles, Missouri in 1956, Clayton Thiel received his BA in sculpture from Maryville University in 1979, then came to California to study with Peter Voulkos and Joan Brown at UC Berkeley. At San Jose State he studied with David Middlebrook and Stan Welsh receiving an MFA in 1985 . He has been a full-time professor of Sculpture (clay, stone, and bronze), Art History, and Design Chabot College in Hayward, CA since 1990. Thiel’s work has been shown widely in exhibits and galleries, and he has received numerous commissions from private collectors.
Artist Statement
Clayton Thiel is a sculptor of clay, stone, and bronze, and a storyteller who is restoring magic and narrative to the world of contemporary sculpture. Continuing in the tradition of sculptors, Peter Volkous, Steve Distabler and Manuel Nari, Clayton Thiel is considered a leading artist among celebrated California art educators. His principle media is clay, but he also works in stone and bronze, handling each medium with a process oriented approach. The fanciful merging of humans and birds in a totemic way, works as a vehicle to transport his viewers to see the world in a mythic dimension. He has a masterful sense of elemental design with a restrained pallet that unifies his body of work. Thiel enters a meditative place when creating – a place between time, space and the worlds.
The themes in Thiel’s work incorporates anthropomorphic figures, stylized patterns, and designs inspired by the elements in nature. For example, water ,as seen in the concentric rings rippling outward or recurring coil motifs. Aside from being made of clay, his preferred color palette is restrained to earth tones.
The Shaman series calls upon the dreamer archetype. A shaman represents one who can hold and move the visions of the world. A shaman can also be a guide through the dream world. The Bird series re-presents the totemic spirit of the predator birds. Each bird embodies the unique powers we want. In Thiel’s latest body of work which merges the two series, Little Eagle Woman and Raven, the pieces derive inspiration from ceremonial headresses from the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest.
Thiel states that: “The source of inspiration for many of these pieces comes from my own personal work with the indigenous ceremonies and practices of the Inca medicine wheel that has had a large impact on me and has taught me how to reclaim my own life.”
In describing Thiel’s daily Studio practice, he says: “I often work on a series of three pieces at a time in rotation. Starting with a common conceptual thread, with various permutations, each member of the series takes on a life of its own - demanding I make some choices about the story wanting to be told. I don’t plan these things - rather there is an intuitive decision-making process that I have come to surrender to.”