Reynolds

Though he was San Antonio’s most influential ceramist and known all over the world, Steve Reynolds spent most of his life defying the concept of traditional ceramics.

“I was not in the least bit interested in the utilitarian tradition of ceramics,” he said in 2005 a few months after retiring from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he had been a professor of ceramics/sculpture since 1977.

“I have spent my career trying to break free of that tradition,” said Reynolds, professor emeritus in ceramics at UTSA.

Reynolds, 67, died at his home north of Boerne on March 8, about eight months after it was discovered he had a brain tumor, said his wife, Daphne Reynolds.

His failing health forced him to resign his position as an endowed chair professor at the University of Texas Pan American in Edinburg this academic year.

His death is a “major loss for the art community,” said Kent Rush, a professor and chairman of UTSA’s art and art history department.

“Steve’s work was amazing, beautiful, poetic,” Rush said.

San Antonians last saw major works by Reynolds in solo shows at the Southwest School of Art & Craft and at the Joan Grona Gallery in late 2005.

Last year, his work was shown in Portland, Ore., and Tucson, Ariz.

A Fulbright Fellow in Hungary in 1991, Reynolds was a visiting artist in Adelaide, Australia, and one of only two U.S. ceramic artists invited to work in Norway’s 120-year-old Porsgrunn porcelain factory.

Four years ago, he was one of a handful of ceramists from North America elected to the prestigious International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva, Switzerland.

Reynolds was a past president of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts.

His works are in permanent collections in Australia, Hungary and throughout the United States.

“Now that I’m in my 60s, I think my work has become more reflective,” Reynolds said two years ago.

“I feel like Bill Murray’s character in ‘Groundhog Day.’ I think I have to keep doing it over and over until I get it right. But the idea that clay is supple and malleable and can be used like any other media is probably the best idea that I’ve contributed to visual thinking.”