Dana Flores is a native Californian sculptural artist currently based in Los Angeles. She started out with a career in the entertainment industry and found herself living in Japan during the mid-1980s. Her early influences originated through her travels there; she was attracted to the ceramics she'd see in restaurants, temples, residences, and museums, and started thinking seriously about clay.
After returning home to California, Flores got her start in the ceramic arts at The Potter's Studio in Los Angeles in 1991. She was hooked from that point on and would often work in the studio until well after midnight. In the mid-90s, she decided to travel through Central and South America where she was influenced by both nature and history, from volcanoes and jungles to Mayan temples with ancient carvings and rough stoneware. Even the dainty and delicate gifts that she found in nature during her travels, such as rocks, shells, flowers, and seedpods, have stayed in her heart and psyche and are channeled in the creations of her work to this day.
Her love of the desert and its silence inspired Flores to retreat to Joshua Tree, a place where she goes for creative rejuvenation. The time she has spent there during the last few years has reawakened her passion for sculptural ceramics. Her experience over the last 18 years of being a chef, a business owner, and a mother to three children has been instrumental in the detail, shape, and movement of her pieces today. The works Flores makes are fluid yet rustic and raw in form. She likes to think of them as items someone might take home with them to remember a point in their journey.
Flores has taken many paths in her life, but she always returns to clay. It has saved her from times of significant grief and sadness by summoning her into great joy through focus. It keeps her sane and grounds her in a way that allows her to give back to those she loves and those she has never met.