Rick Dillingham

Ancestral Puebloan Socorro Black on White ware jar c. 1050–1300 Rick Dillingham (1952–1994) was an American ceramic artist, scholar, collector and museum professional best known for his broken pot technique and scholarly publications on Pueblo pottery.

Education From 1968-1970, Dillingham attended Ventura Junior College, also in 1970 he attended Moorpark Junior College, both in Ventura County, California. In 1970-1971 he attended the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California.

Dillingham received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1974 from the University of New Mexico. After graduating with his BFA, Dillingham went on to Claremont Graduate School of Scripps College, where he studied with Paul Soldner. He received a MFA degree in 1976 from Claremont Graduate School.

Biography Rick Dillingham was born to Dil and Nancy Dillingham

Dillingham curated numerous exhibitions, exhibited his own work nationally, and lectured on Native American pottery.

His own ceramic work was inspired by the pottery of the Ancestral Puebloan people.

Dillingham's experience studying and repairing Native American pots, as well as his interest in anthropology influenced his own art work. He is known for pioneering a process in which he hand-built a vessel, pit-fired it, deliberately broke it into shards, randomly painted both sides of each shard, Dillingham's vessels were produced by coil or slab work.

Collections Dillingham's work can be found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, His work is also found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Everson Museum of Art, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, among others.

Death Dillingham contracted the AIDS virus yet continued "living well with the disease", even riding cross-country to attend a Harley-Davidson convention with his oxygen tank strapped to the back of his motorcycle. Dillingham appears on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, his panel having a style reminiscent of many of his works.

Legacy The University of New Mexico press posthumously released the book Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery, an expansion of his book Seven Families in Pueblo Pottery.