Meet the Artist
Christopher Moench
Sculpture
Chris Moench has been a professional studio potter since 1993. In 2000 his clay-work took an unexpected, but wondrous new direction. The reason: coping with tragedy. A massive gasoline pipeline explosion near his home killed three boys and destroyed a mile of woodland river in a city park. This awful calamity moved him to sculpt a memorial “story” on the outside of a three-foot-tall clay cylinder. Without knowing, he created his first prayer wheel. Later, mounted on a revolving stand at an outdoor gallery, the wheel became a vessel for people to place their reflections and prayers about the tragedy inside on pieces of paper. Today, Chris works full-time designing and sculpting prayer wheels for his company: “Axis of Hope.” His prayer wheels have been revolving and evolving at public exhibits across the west: American Craft Council Exhibition of Fine Craft in San Francisco, Sun Valley Center Idaho Arts and Crafts Festival, Best of the Northwest Shows in Portland and Seattle, and “Ashes to Art: Funerary Art,” San Francisco and Philadelphia. Chris has created more than 1,800 prayer wheels for individuals, hospitals & healthcare providers, non-profit community service institutions, businesses and religious organizations across the country.
Chris’s wheel-thrown porcelain or stoneware ceramic vessels are illustrated with sgraffito or mishima techniques to depict narrative images of our natural world. Each vessel is fired to cone 6 (2,234 degrees Fahrenheit) in an electric kiln, then attached to a high-quality metal turntable allowing it to be spun easily.
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