Meet the Artist

John Richard Lloyd

“Born of fire, memory, and the sacred mess of being human.”

My Story

Though I’ve lived in California for many years, New Mexico still hums in my bones. I was born and raised there, just like my parents and my maternal grandmother before me. The land of New Mexico is layered with ancient history, cultural fusion, and enduring mystery. The deep roots of the Anasazi people stretch through time, and I’ve long been fascinated by the remnants they left behind — pottery shards, ruins, whispers of a people who spoke through their craft. Their descendants still reside in the pueblos along the Rio Grande, and I hold their stories with quiet reverence.

Spanish devotion arrived in the 1600s, bringing Catholic traditions and architectural grace. Generations later, the grit of frontier life followed with trappers, ranchers, and settlers seeking space and sky. My great-grandparents ran a large cattle ranch in northeastern New Mexico, where people with tuberculosis (“consumption,” as they called it) came to convalesce in the dry air and open land. I like to think healing happened there, beneath those wide skies.

I grew up in Las Vegas, New Mexico — not the one with showgirls and slot machines, but the one nestled at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It’s a place where the plains meet the pines, where the landscape shifts in every direction. And you’ve probably seen it, even if you don’t know it. Films like Easy Rider, Red Dawn, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit were all filmed there. I was an extra in Easy Rider, paid fifteen dollars to run through a sprinkler as the motorcycles passed by. My scene got cut. Damn you, Peter Fonda. Still, something sparked in me. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to act.

I studied theatre at New Mexico Highlands University for two years, won an award, and followed my dreams west to San Francisco. I earned my degree from SFSU, but life had other plans. I began working with one of the leading HIV/AIDS organizations in the country, a place at the forefront of hospice care. It was a time of devastating loss and unwavering compassion, and that experience shaped me more deeply than any role I ever played on stage.

When disability brought a shift in my life, I enrolled in ceramics classes at City College. That’s when a new chapter quietly began. Clay gave me something I didn’t know I needed, a tactile way to piece together history, memory, emotion. The earth beneath my hands became both a language and a lifeline.

Art, for me, has always been about connection to story, to place, to resilience. And in every vessel I shape or form I carve, I still hear the echo of that New Mexican wind.

Selected Highlights:

2006: Clay (re)emerge – Bay Area group show, juried by Danae Mattes

2006: Best in Show – CCSF Student Ceramic Exhibition, judged by Christa Assad

2008: Guest Artist – SF Clay & Glass Festival

2010: BFA from California College of the Arts, with High Distinction

2011: CCACA Conference

Work included in the John Natsoulas Foundation Collection, Davis, CA

Volunteer Teaching Assistant with Marc Lancett, Solano College (2010–11)

Read more about John’s artistic vision here.

Artist Statement

“Those broken pottery shards weren’t just debris. They were echoes. They had secrets.”