Dean Schwarz

Dean Schwarz (born 1938) is an American ceramic artist, painter, writer and teacher. He was also the co-founder and proprietor of South Bear School (1970-) by which he imparted to students (many of whom have since become accomplished potters) a tradition of functional studio pottery that originated as early as the Middle Ages, and of which an impassioned revival occurred in 1919 at the Bauhaus in Weimar.

Schwarz was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a city with historical links to Regionalist painter Grant Wood. The son of a welder, his initial interests were in athletics, but as an undergraduate student at Iowa State Teachers College (now called the University of Northern Iowa), he developed an interest in ceramics, painting and other visual arts, and abruptly changed his major. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960, and a Master of Arts in 1961. In 1960, he married Geraldine Fromm, a writer and literature teacher, with whom he raised six children. In their years together, he and his wife have traveled extensively throughout the world and have often collaborated on books and other projects.

While serving in the U.S. Navy in the early 1960s, he used his shore leaves to visit the studios of world famous potters, notably Shoji Hamada in Japan, and Bauhaus-trained Master Potter Marguerite Wildenhain at Pond Farm near Guerneville, California. He studied with Wildenhain at Pond Farm in 1964, then returned there for two additional summers, serving the third year as her teaching associate. In 1968, he also studied with ceramic artist William Daley at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.

In 1970, while at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa (where he taught from 1964 to 1986), Schwarz co-founded South Bear School, an innovative summer arts school (pottery, painting, poetry, et al.) in a former hospital house in Highlandville, Iowa (population 30), adjacent to a trout stream called South Bear Creek. In 1976, South Bear School was relocated to a wooded rural property outside of Decorah in a vacant 65-room nursing home. Marguerite Wildenhain was a frequent visitor both there and at Luther College. In her later years, she advised new students to study first at South Bear before working with her in California.

...
Wikipedia