Bobbi Jeanne Quercia

Biography

Born in 1950 into a family of artists in Monterey, California my love for art was always present. I remember the intrigue when my mother completed a piece of sculpture. I was brought up knowing the way of the artist.

My career as a clay artist began at the age of fourteen when I began producing pottery for our family gallery in the town of Mendocino. Encouraged by my step-father, Al Need, a seascape painter and my mother, Lois Need, a sculptor and painter, they instilled the desire to create. I was also influenced and encouraged by my father, William Dailey, a wild life painter. The Family Gallery carried my work in the sixties and seventies.

In the mid seventies I married Jim Thaman, a fine woodworker. We had two beautiful children, Maya, born 1977 and Justin, born 1982. In 1985 we opened the second Family Gallery in Duncans Mills, California. The Family Gallery featured the creative work of three generations. In 1995 we merged with the Quercia Gallery. Ron Quercia, a painter and framer, and I were married in 2000. We closed the gallery in 2016.

I have continued to work in clay sense 1965 moving from pottery to sculpture. I have studied and been influenced by Sophia Southerland, Brad Perry, Jack Sears, Richard Robertson and Sasha Makofkin. At the present time my work has made a turn to abstraction. I am enjoying slab forms, producing faces and large figurative sculpture.

My husband and I are living in the small village of Salmon Creek near the town of Bodega Bay. We support each other in our creative work and we are working as full time artists supporting each other in our creative work.

website by Lois Phillips