Joan Cihak has a varied background but her most recent career prior to retiring and moving to Seattle was in health care marketing and research. She always had an interest in art and dabbled in oil painting but never considered clay as a medium until she took an encaustic class at the Pratt and began to wonder about using encaustic on ceramics. She took a couple of clay classes in the Phoenix area and was hooked. Upon moving to Seattle in 2011 she was lucky to land near Seward Park Clay Studio.
After decades of heavy analytics and serious healthcare work, Joan is having fun exploring her creative side. She loves the structure of working with cool malleable clay and the uncontrollability of hot molten wax (encaustic). She is especially drawn to botanical and organic forms within her work. Thankfully, the only analytics she worries about now is whether the Kiln Gods will have blessed her firings.
To contact Joan, please email her at:cihakjoan@gmail.com