Ceramicist Russell DeHaven has infused the sequence of sacred geometry into his own art. Each clay structure that he creates is designed in a pattern that pays homage to an ancient formula, tapping into the intersections of “sacred geometry” and geology. The precision of hexagonal shapes and the use of Southwestern colors are revealed in his work.

DeHaven explained that the vision for these pieces came from a shamanic medicine journey he took several years ago, which has culminated in a two-year body of work that will be unveiled at Rovang Ceramics on Friday, Sept. 1, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Early Years

DeHaven explained that he was never “book smart” as a child but did gravitate toward math and geometry. Art was his diversion, and he specialized in creating photorealistic illustrations from photographs. Thoughts of going into automotive design as a career or art school diminished as he discovered graphic design in junior college.

DeHaven started his own business at the age of 19 with a friend, who, at the time, was dating the daughter of racecar driver Mario Andretti. The duo soon began designing logos for Andretti and became immersed in the car racing industry.

“[After six years], my business partner ended up leaving the firm and I started to think, what the hell am I going to do with myself,” DeHaven said. “I was going to do two things — continue with a brand new career or I was going to become a park ranger.”

DeHaven took his portfolio around to design agencies and was hired at a brand-identity firm in San Francisco as an implementation specialist, where he worked with global brands. His career eventually took him to New York to work with his company’s competitor.

“I’ve always been a really intense worker, making sure everything was as perfect as it possibly could be,” DeHaven said. “I really strive to achieve excellence in everything that I ever did in the work world. But I left my firm in New York after I hit a glass ceiling — and back there, it was just too much.”

While dabbling in ceramics in 2005, DeHaven caught the clay bug. He was inspired by his father’s work in clay, which combined abstract and slab work in sculptural forms. “When I started getting into ceramics, I had a radically new appreciation for his expertise in both the form and also the glazing,” DeHaven said.

The left side of the brain is said to control logic and analysis, while the right side controls creativity and intuition, but DeHaven said that he is used to riding the rails as both halves of his brain merge.

“This whole engineering side is new,” DeHaven reflected. “I tell people, I’m not an engineer, I’m a graphic designer. There’s a lot of precision in the graphic design work that I’ve done in the past. I’ve been focusing more recently on environmental graphic design. There’s a lot of precision meets creativity … I probably would have been an architect or an automotive designer — there’s this marriage of engineering with creativity. My dad was the same way. He was an engineering artist.”

DeHaven came to Sedona seven years ago as part of a new journey, when he said he felt that his connection to spirit amplified, creating harmony within himself. He said that he was given a vision to create geometric designs in his work as an ode to sacred architecture and crystalline forms.

“I like where nature, science and spirituality converge,” DeHaven said.

DeHaven’s sculptural ceramic work includes hexagons that incorporate the Fibonacci sequence, a set of integers in which the product is the sum of the two previous integers, first noted by 13th century Italian mathematician Leonardo Pisano, who was nicknamed “Fibonacci.” The sequence, which begins 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13 … has been called “nature’s secret code” by some. It is mathematically approximate to the “divine proportion.”

“I started to really expand quickly on the various aspects of ‘sacred geometry,’” DeHaven said. “In the Fibonacci sequence, and the golden ratio, I started to tap into these things that had a lot of meaning to me but also had this geometry, which you can appreciate, from my work history. I just have a very analytical mind and it was a lovely marriage of those two. I was doing everything I could, not to force it, and create something beautiful, and just let it happen.”

DeHaven is designing a Fibonacci hexagonal sculpture as the “official artist” of the Mayor’s Art Award that will be presented to five finalists in Sedona in May. “I started looking out there to see who else was doing anything like engineering geometric forms in clay or marrying glass and ceramics together, and there was no one,” DeHaven observed.

“That’s probably a good direction for me if I’m trying to be an artist for the rest of my life.”

As DeHaven allows his life and creation to unfold, he said that he sees “some really cool stuff coming out of my hands, out of my heart, and I’m just enjoying where it’s all going.”

Looking at his clay sculptures, DeHaven admitted that each piece brings a smile to his face, even when he notices the imperfections created in the kiln. He compared his work to a crystal filled with tiny inclusions and imperfections.

“It’s like when you find just the right crystal, it could have imperfections on its own. Each one speaks to us in a certain way,” DeHaven said. “You just fall in love with the shape, the form and the clarity or the abnormalities and whatever else that might be inside that crystal.”

DeHaven says that he likes the imperfections in a crystal, just as he likes the imperfections in his clay sculptures, and he likes the sculptures that he creates to be perfectly imperfect. “I don’t think there is an underlying high degree of expectation of myself, as there always has been, to be perfect, which has been the direction of my work for most of my life,” DeHaven reflected. “It’s nice to be able to apply that same rigor, my ideology, to clay and having it all make me smile.”