Anne Hirondelle was born in Vancouver, Washington, in 1944 and spent her childhood as a farm girl near Salem, Oregon. She received a BA in English from the University of Puget Sound (1966) and an MA in counseling from Stanford University (1967). Hirondelle moved to Seattle in 1967 and directed the University YWCA until 1972. She attended the School of Law at the University of Washington for a year before discovering and pursuing her true profession, first in the ceramics program at the Factory of Visual Arts in Seattle (1973-74), and later in the BFA program at the University of Washington (1974-76). Anne Hirondelle has lived and worked in Port Townsend, Washington, since 1977.

Hirondelle's beginnings as an artist were with clay. For over 20 years she was drawn to the vessel as an abstraction and metaphor for containment taking ideas from traditional functional pots and stretching them into architectural and organic sculptural forms. In 2020, to explore more formal ideas she abandoned her signature glazes for unglazed white stoneware and moved the work from the horizontal to the vertical plane. A year later she began painting the surfaces. Simultaneously, her drawings, once ancillary to the sculpture, took on a life of their own. Derived from the ceramic forms, drawn with graphite and colored pencil on multiple layers of tracing paper, they are further explorations of abstraction.

Hirondelle has exhibited nationally in one-person and group shows including: New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Scottsdale and Seattle. Her pieces are in a myriad private and public collections including: The White House Collection in the Clinton Library, Little Rock, AR; The Museum of Arts and Design, NY; The L.A. County Art Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum.

As a clay sculptor, my work is rooted in abstraction. For over 20 years I was drawn to the vessel as a metaphor for containment. I borrowed ideas from traditional functional pots and stretched them into architectural and organic sculptural forms. In 2002, to exploremore formal ideas, I abandoned my signature glazes for unglazed white stoneware and moved some of the work from the horizontal to the vertical plane. The introduction of paint in 2005 was a further letting go of tradition. I focused on openness rather than containment and found meaning independent of the vessel. Over the years, while remaining true to my clay roots, I’ve continually searched for sculptural possibilities by deconstructing and reconfiguring pieces, grouping them in multiples, and introducing wood elements. I’ve investigated both form and color.

My drawings, initially ancillary to my sculptures have taken on a life of their own. In 2000, I started a new drawing series by intuitively folding pieces of tracing paper. Still interested in form, I was able to create three-dimensional works in two-dimensions. The folds and edges tell me where to draw while the shadows make additional lines of their own. Flattened behind glass, these three: folds, lines and shadows combine to form geometric drawings.

Arizona State University, Art Museum, Tempe, AZ

Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinberg, TN

Boeing Corporate Headquarters, Chicago, IL

Boise State University, Boise, ID

Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

The Contemporary Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI

Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA

Gardiner Museum, Toronto, ON

Gateway Tower, Seattle, WA

Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, OR

Hallmark Cards, Kansas City, MO

Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA (The Contemporary Northwest Ceramics Collection, Norm Maleng Building)

Howard and Glen Laurie Smits Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

J Crew Headquarters

JMB Realty Corporation, Chicago, IL

Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA

Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY

Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA

Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

Neiman Marcus, Bellevue, WA

Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT

Oregon Arts Commission, Art in Public Places, Salem, OR

Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA

Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI

Marer Collection, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, CA

Seattle Public Utilities Watermarks Project, Seattle, WA

Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, WA

Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA

Walker Art Collection, Garnett, KS

West One Bancorp, Boise, ID

Westwood Corporation, Portland, OR

Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA

The White House Collection, William Jefferson Clinton Library, Little Rock, AR