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Patti Warashina Creates Bone-White China Figurines with a Feminist Edge

For the past 50 years, Pacific Northwest artist Patti Warashina has been creating ceramics that merge a range of themes including car culture, politics, and feminism. While her earlier female "shrines" contained vibrant pops of color, her most recent figurines are made of bone-white china. The characters take on the form of witches dancing around a fire, and nude devils and mortals riding in and alongside cars. Warashina explains in an interview with Seattle PI that she is inspired by Greek and Egyptian columns in the form of female figures, small court figures from the Han Dynasty, and early Japanese Haniwa figures.

For the past 50 years, Pacific Northwest artist Patti Warashina has been creating ceramics that merge a range of themes including car culture, politics, and feminism. While her earlier female “shrines” contained vibrant pops of color, her 1970s figurines are made of bone-white china. The characters take on the form of witches dancing around a fire, and nude devils and mortals riding in and alongside cars. Warashina explains in an interview with Seattle PI that she is inspired by Greek and Egyptian columns in the form of female figures, small court figures from the Han Dynasty, and early Japanese Haniwa figures.

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