Lot 183D

Larry Carnes Studio Pottery Bowl - "Bear Spirit Moon"

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Lot 183
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Larry Carnes Studio Pottery Bowl - "Bear Spirit Moon"
Larry Carnes Studio Pottery Bowl - "Bear Spirit Moon"
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Larry Carnes Studio Pottery Bowl - "Bear Spirit Moon"

Estimate: $800 - $1,200

Starting Bid: $400

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
August 6, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Larry E. Carnes (American / Native American, active XX to XXI century). "Bear Spirit Moon" painted pottery bowl, n.d. Signed on verso. A broad, low-shouldered stoneware bowl whose pale, sand-toned ground carries a single commanding image: a standing bear rendered in warm terracotta slip, arms outstretched, its body opened to reveal a densely coiled field of spirals. To the figure's left, a small radiant sun (or moon) burns in the same iron-red. The spiral vocabulary, drawn from petroglyph traditions of the California coast, gives the beast an interior life, as though its heartwood were made of turning wheels. The bear stands among Native peoples as a spirit of healing, strength, and introspective power, and Carnes composes it here as a totemic presence rather than a naturalistic animal. The globular, deliberately imperfect form emphasizes the sphere the artist favors as his organizing shape, its speckled matte surface set against the burnished sheen of the slipped figure. Size: 20.25" Diam x 4.3" H (51.4 cm Diam x 10.9 cm H).

About the artist: Larry Carnes works clay the way a sculptor works stone that already contains its form, favoring the sphere as his organizing shape and the starburst as his signature mark. Every piece stamped with that starburst carries the same conviction: that a circle, more than any other geometry, holds the shape of a life fully lived.

Carnes trained at Chouinard Art Institute, where his coursework in cartooning, animation, and industrial design gave him a graphic eye unusual among studio potters, and he holds a graduate degree from Illinois State University. That academic grounding met a different kind of education under Otto Heino, the Ojai based ceramicist whose glazes and forms command prices in the thousands and whose reputation as one of the twentieth century's defining American studio potters is well documented. Working alongside Heino gave Carnes both a technical vocabulary and a standard to measure himself against. He put that technical fluency to industrial use as well, serving around 1997 as a technical specialist to major California clay manufacturers including Gladding McBean, work that sits at some distance from studio artistry but sharpened his command of materials and firing.

Carnes now works from a home studio in Palo Cedro, in the far north of the state, while showing primarily out of Ojai and in galleries across California, a geography that puts roughly the length of the state between his kiln and his audience. His Native American heritage shapes a recurring body of work: a series exploring shamanic imagery, spirit horses, and other figures drawn from the natural world. Among these, his Chumash Stones, begun in 2008, translate the petroglyph imagery found in the caves around Ojai into ceramic form, made with the stated approval of a Chumash elder to use the symbols. He extends the theme with grouped stone assemblies and figures he calls Keepers of the Stones, and with Kiln Gods, small guardian figures, generally under five inches, that he makes anew each time he loads a kiln. Made once and never repeated, each Kiln God functions less as product than as talisman, and collectors prize them precisely because no two exist. Alongside this symbolic work runs a more conventional studio practice: vases, bowls, cups, rice bowl sets, and wall pieces that show the same formal discipline without the ceremonial weight.

Provenance: private Englewood, Colorado, USA collection; ex-Trautenberg Estate

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Item # 204167

  • Condition: Intact and in excellent overall condition with suspension wire on verso for display.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000