American Craft Council Fellow James L. Tanner died at his home in Janesville, Minnesota, in January at the age of 84. Although known primarily for his teaching and artistic practice in ceramics, he was a multifaceted artist who also explored glass, painting, printmaking, and bronze and mixed-media sculpture.
James Tanner was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1941 and developed his interest in art at an early age. With the encouragement of his family, he studied art in high school and earned his BA in fine art at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee in 1964. He went on to earn an MS and MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he had the opportunity to study ceramics with Don Reitz and glass with Harvey Littleton.
In 1968, Tanner took a teaching position at Mankato State College in Minnesota, where he taught glasswork until 1979. Around 1980, Mankato State consolidated its two campuses into one, and out of practicality and the lack of space for glassblowing, he shifted his teaching to ceramics.
Tanner inspired students to develop their own unique voice and vision. “The good teachers I had were very respectful of the individual. They were not the kind of dogmatics who were trying to cram some program down a student’s throat,” he said in a 2011 interview for the Archives of American Art. “To facilitate the development of this uniqueness, you create an environment. It’s sort of similar to gardening. You fertilize the area, you water it, you take care of it.”
Pope Saturn, 1986, stoneware with glazes, 25.5 x 22.75 x 4 in.
