SEATTLE -- Eric Painter is a potter. Actually, he was a biologist before he quit his research job with National Marine Fisheries and bought a pottery school and gallery in downtown Seattle's historic Pioneer Square.
Now, supervising a staff of six teachers and a growing number of students, Painter devotes all his time to his pottery school, with little time for his own creations. Now and then he finds time to chat with his neighbor Taiko Suzuki about his year as a high school exchange student in Daiwacho, Hiroshima, about the influence on his pottery of the Japanese potter Shoji Hamada, and about their plans for next month's displays for the Gallery Walk.
Suzuki came to Seattle in 1982 and set up a large downtown gallery with Ben Muchnick, her partner since 1972. Suzuki creates her own paper with a blend of Japanese and Western techniques, applying konnyaku to make it strong. She combines collage, print and paper-making, blending garden plant or flax fiber, then applying them to her homemade fiber paper and painting with bright pigments in a "wet on wet" technique.