Life Ponderings: One Face at a Time
- Christine "Liz" LaRue
- Jul 3
- 4 min read
Most ceramic artists are known for the cups, bowls, fancy cylinders, and teapots that they throw on the potter's wheel. Me? I do faces—tan faces, brown faces, Black faces, even faces in porcelain that obviously look African American or dark-skinned Latino.
Why?
I came of age in the late 1950s to 1970s. I was an artistic library geek, greedy for my school’s library or the local public one. My father got me my first library card when I was 5 years old to support my love of reading. I was a fast reader and plundered my school library as if I had a bottomless gift card for chocolate.
The only problem was, for all the Hardy Boys mysteries or Jack and Jill stories—or later, All Quiet on the Western Front—finding books that reflected my brown face, and that of my friends and family, was nearly impossible.
Sure, there were the Little Black Sambo books, with exaggerated eyes and lips like watermelons. Or National Geographic, which often portrayed Black and Brown “primitive” people with no clothes, living a bare, hand-to-mouth existence. That was how people of color were depicted.
Where were the stories about Black and Brown people? I wanted to see faces like mine.
Even in the toy store, walking through aisles in 1962, I looked for Black baby dolls. I found one—darker than a Hershey bar, with fat ruby lips and painted-on hair drawn right onto the skull. Our Black faces didn’t even warrant fake doll hair to comb.
My school textbooks could have a whole chapter on slavery, and the only image might be of "Whipped Peter," the African American man with a horribly keloided back from repeated whippings. He had escaped a Mississippi plantation in 1863 to seek freedom with Union soldiers. When they saw his back, white soldiers were stunned—and a photo of him became a key visual argument against the Southern way of life.
Images of us, as Black people, can be powerful tools for education, politics, healthcare, and for uplifting self-esteem and spirit.
Where were all the other Black faces that populated our world? They were missing everywhere. And I had a hunger to see my community represented.
At the age of 10, my parents sent me to a summer art and music camp where I was introduced to ceramics by a famous Japanese artist. I was hooked. Clay became the foundation of my artistic expression.
The first clay face I made was of God—coal black skin, white whiskers, and curly hair. My white campmates told me God couldn’t be Black, that He could only be white. I refused to believe that.
Learning how to sculpt faces in clay allowed my imagination and hands to begin righting a wrong that had been decades in the making.
Throughout my ceramic career, I have specialized in making sculptures that represent Black and Brown faces. I do tiles, too. Even my porcelain pieces reflect African American features and themes, like squished-up faces while getting our hair combed. We all did that as kids.
I’ve never forgotten the disappointment I felt in 1962 when I went to pick out my first baby doll. After searching two entire aisles, I came up short.
The first mass-produced Black Barbie wasn’t introduced until 1980. And even then, you were lucky to find 10 of them among a thousand white dolls. Black Barbie didn’t just have white features painted brown—her face had distinctive African American features, very different from white Barbie’s. That was a milestone in positive visual representation for Black girls.
So when I sculpt a Black or Brown face, I feel I’m contributing to a world that has long neglected the African American diaspora—our beauty, our humor, our identity—in toy stores, museums, television, movies, and fine art for generations.
I'm adding to our diverse landscape one face at a time.
We need to be seen to see ourselves, love ourselves, and feel valued in the images we encounter in our lives and our imaginations—even if it’s on something as simple as a mug or a tile.
No Black or Brown child should walk into a store and not see themselves represented—in toys, homeware, museums, television, media, or books.
We need to see our faces and smile—because I know what it’s like to never, ever see yourself positively represented.
It can be soul-crushing.
Christine LaRue
Artist Bio
Christine “Liz” LaRue is a clay artist and illustrationist. She is known for her intricately textured figurative sculptures and emotionally illustrative drawings. Chicago-born, though also raised in Utah and Idaho, Ms. LaRue is of Creole/Cuban descent. Her art has been influenced by her Afro-Latino heritage. Ms. LaRue’s interests have been in pre-Columbian art of the Olmec, Maya of Mexico, Nazca, and Moche face pots of Peru. This also includes the bronze sculptures of the Ife of Nigeria and Tā Moko tattoo art of the Maōri.
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