Although Palos Verdes artist Peggy Sivert Zask practices in many disciplines, these days she is very excited about her work in ceramics.

“Ceramics are kind of new to the fine art scene and I’m really excited about that,” she said. “My goal is to apply my fine art background to clay as opposed to viewing it as craft.”

At Cal State Long Beach, Zask Primarily studied drawing and painting. In fact, she wasn’t introduced to ceramics until she was asked to teach it at Mira Costa High School about 10 years ago. She immediately took to the medium and, taking advantage of the school’s resources, began learning everything she could. “I really learned by experience,” she said.

Although Zask says her work has always had an emotional quality, she describes her most recent series of pieces as being stronger in that area than anything that came before. The pieces were created following the death of her 21-year-old stepdaughter in a car accident. Zask poured her feelings into her art.

“I was starting a series of busts and I just continued to work on them through the grieving process,” she explained. “It really turned into a release of emotional energy and a need to connect spiritually. The pieces became vehicles for emotion and spiritual energy.”

Zask feels that this emotional backdrop unifies the pieces and makes them more grounded. “I wasn’t concerned with surface,” she said. “I was most concerned with the simplified form ... There was a need to not embellish the surface consciously.”

The artist continued to pour her emotions into the pieces even during the firing stage. With some ceremony, she fired the pieces using wood in a hole dug in her backyard.

Zask has shown her art extensively. Just recently, she was featured in a retrospective at Santa Ana College, as well as at the Legacy Art Gallery in the Artists Village in Santa Ana. Her work has been shown throughout Los Angeles. She has also shown at the Ismael Gallery in Soho, New York. In addition, she directed the South Bay Contemporary Museum of Art in Torrance and opened the Minus Zero Gallery.

Zask is a native of Los Angeles.