Mark Sucharski, founder of LunarStar Art Pottery, is a Van Briggle Pottery-trained potter. He has worked for the world famous, Colorado Springs-based pottery off and on for nearly 30 years. He was trained as a potter by Master Potter Fred Wills. And is one of the last in a line of potters who can trace his heritage all the way back to Artus Van Briggle. Today’s Van Briggle potters come to the 110-year-old pottery with degrees in fine arts and/or experience with their own art businesses.
His last return to Van Briggle was precipitated by a family tragedy in 2000 and LunarStar was started shortly thereafter. Owners Bertha and Craig Stevenson allow the potters a table on the sales floor to sell their own wares. So Mark founded LunarStar, named for a memorial tattoo his wife, Karen, has of their late daughter, Genevieve, as a star cradled in the crescent moon of her mother.
Karen joined the pottery in its second year after confessing that she had always wanted to do art with Mark. She painted a vine on a vase and left the rest of the outside of the piece unglazed, unwittingly creating the signature, "open coat" style of LunarStar. She has continued to experiment with various glazes, commercial and hand-crafted by Mark, and motifs, primarily floral, but including studies of her favorite paintings and photographs.
Karen also paints, quilts, makes jewelry, and writes, teaches and performs poetry she sometimes inscribes on pieces of pottery. She believes the universe made a mistake when it allowed the couple’s daughter to die in a car accident. She spends her days raising hers and Mark’s three amazing sons and creating beauty to put into the world to try to replace some of what it lost with the loss of Genevieve.