Larkspur sculptor Marcia Dalva Shows Her Work at the Marin Art Festival

“There are only so many shelves in a person’s house to hold what she makes,” says Larkspur-living sculptor Marcia Dalva, one reason she’s showing her work at the Marin Art Festival this weekend.

Dalva, who’s been doing fired and glazed clay work for some 30 years, has long been a part of assorted craft shows and street fairs, but this one is her favorite. This year, 250 artists and craftspeople are showing their work. Dalva are selling pieces ranging from tiny owls to the whimsical, three-foot-high “She Decided to Fill Her Empty Nest with Small Red Cats.”

Originally, Dalva liked the idea of creative work she could do “while taking care of everyday things” like kids. “You could pick up a piece, put it down for 15 minutes during a crisis, deal with that, and come back to your work.”

All these years later, her “Empty Nest” piece began, as you might expect, when the last of her four children went off to college, and Dalva needed a little distraction: “A piece begins with something going on inside of me. This was a way to focus on an idea.”

So Dalva got out a bag of clay, cut the clay into small pieces with a wire, and rolled them in her hands to make coils, as if she were making a pot. She stuffs newspaper inside the bigger pieces and works until something literally starts to take shape. “At that point,” she says, “you become aware it’s not what you had in mind. If you keep the clay damp, you can work on it endlessly. Finally, the piece gets better, and you calm down.”

As the clay dries, it stiffens, and adjustments become easier. Carving might take place. “The process takes several weeks; that’s why you work on several things at once. Also, you want to fill the kiln.” Oh, did I mention that Dalva has an electric kiln the size of a washing machine in her studio?

Once the clay has lost as much moisture as possible, Dalva puts the piece in the kiln for several days, for a process called bisque firing. Then she paints it with a glaze of, essentially, powdered glass and puts it back in a now-hotter kiln—firing, cooling, and glazing again and again until she’s satisfied.

Dalva tends to create “women doing various things” and horses, cats, owls. “People come up to me at the fair each year and say, ‘What’s new?’ One time someone said, ‘Don’t you have any turtles this year?’ Another time, someone asked me to make a wolf. People thought it looked like a howling bear. I thought it looked like a golden retriever.”

June 18-19, Marin Art Festival, Marin Civic Center, San Rafael, $10; kids under 14 free. Dalva will be in booth 60, selling work from $30 to $450.