About

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Dennis O'Leary began making ceramic sculpture again after 40 years of practicing in other materials and a career working in arts administration. All the sculpture shown on this site is the result of twelve years work in his studio in Pacific Grove, CA.

 

The sculptures fall into particular groups and are arranged on this website with the most recent featured first with each previous series proceeding to the right. They began in 2012 with a simple exploration of Stones, which soon evolved into Head Stones that took on the character of historical figures whom had been beheaded and depicted in historical renderings including John the Baptist, Medusa, and Saint Denis among others. Subsequently the work transformed into many thematic groups including Meteorites, Ground Clouds, Noggins, Elements, Victims and Villains, Effigies, Lunacies, Fragments, Ritual Bowls, and most recently Baubles, Florescent Baubles and more recently, Fractures. 

 

Each thematic group of sculptures finds its own course, influenced by its predecessors and a source for subsequent inspiration. In process, the works frequently take on a life of their own, defining their forms, character and content. One tries to stay out of their way and embrace the collaboration that it is.

 

Biography  

 

O'Leary found his initial artistic success in ceramics as an art student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where in 1968 he received BFA degree and in 1970 a MFA degree. Moving on to San Francisco and without a ceramic studio he found interest and satisfaction with an array of other creative endeavors and artistic enterprises that extended over the following forty years. In addition to actively making and exhibiting sculpture through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, he served as the Assistant Director of Education at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1972 through 1979, and then Assistant Professor of Art at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana from 1979 to 1981 where he managed the school's gallery program and taught art courses in both studio and academic disciplines. 



Fed up with the inaction of university bureaucracy, O'Leary moved to Boise, Idaho in 1981 to assume the position of Executive Director with the small-scale Boise Gallery of Art. After 16 years he left the institution transformed through managing two major building expansions, a staff of twenty, and an annual budget of $1M into the Boise Art Museum. Knowing when enough is enough, O'Leary returned to California in 1997 to become Executive Director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Here he administered providing "the gift of time" to more than 1,000 artists (with a thousand before them) for 14 years. He was able to achieve that goal on his own in 2011 when retired and moved to Pacific Grove to rekindle his ambition to make art full time. Now, after a dozen years of concerted output, he has achieved a substantial body of work.  

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