ART

Quite by accident, I came to know an accomplished Iranian artist in our community in Berkeley. His name is Farrokh Shehabi, and he is a ceramics artist. Though he is an engineer by education and profession and managed his construction business for many years, for the past ten years he has found his lost love and passion, pottery. He says about that passion: “It was as though all my life I had been longing for the way clay feels in my hands, as it finds shape and purpose, each piece telling its own story.”

Farrokh’s works have received wide attention for their artistic presentation and their functional application. This is what one of his visitors had to say about them: “Some were subtle art works on their own, some useful artifacts to grace households, and I was there in the studio, but my imagination and associations of texture, color, and hue took me across boundaries of time and of place. I saw in my mind’s eye the bull paintings of an ancient time in a faraway cave as I was looking at the yellow, off-white, and black of what seemed a painting, but was humbly called a plate mounted on a simple stand.”>>>PHOTOS

I spent a few hours visiting him in his workshop in Berkeley this fall. His studio is cozy, his art superb, and his hospitality grade A. Farrokh and his wife, Linda, who is a pioneer in Montessori education in the Bay Area, also own a ranch in Vacaville on which they have fruit orchards and train and breed Peruvian Paso horses. Farrokh served me tea, fruits from his orchard, a light supper, many beautiful pieces of Persian poetry, and his unique memories of his close friendships with the late Iranian poet Nader Naderpour and the Iranian literary icon, Sadegh Choobak. I had a most delightful time meeting Farrokh and his works.

Visit Farrokh Shehabi’s website farrokhceramics.com and read more about him. If you live in this area, you can visit this interesting man in his studio by appointment year-round. Don’t miss the last chance to visit Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios this weekend, December 15th and 16th (Sawtooth Building, 2547 8th Street at Dwight, Bay 2, Studio #23, Berkeley, CA 94710, Tel: 510 841-0843). Among tens of other artists in the historic Sawtooth Building, featuring their hand-made arts and crafts, Farrokh’s studio will also be open between 11:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on both days>>>PHOTOS

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