Richard Hirsch

Richard Hirsch studied art education at the State University of New York–New Paltz before earning a MFA in ceramics from the School for American Craftsmen at Rochester Institute of Technology. After teaching at Nazareth College in Pittsford, New York, for a few years, he accepted a position in Canada and moved to a 180-acre farm in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. This move took him even farther away from Rochester and its vibrant craft community, leading Hirsch to refer to this experience as "the beginning of me influencing myself." He has since returned to the United States and teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Hirsch prefers raku, a process of firing clay initially developed by sixteenth-century Japanese potters, which allows him to experiment with color and tone. (Susan Wechsler, Low-Fire Ceramics: A New Direction in American Clay, 1981)