Karla Lieberman liked to build tottering things, held together by the force of their personality. In ceramic and later in glass and ceramic, she made elephants as spirit catchers, boats to cross troubled waters and towers to take you higher.
She died at home on Tuesday a year and a half after being diagnosed with ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She was 57.
“She was gracious about her illness,” said her sister, Joan Lieberman-Brill. “It was devastating to get the diagnosis because there is no cure and its progression is terrible, but she stayed true to who she was.”
Lieberman-Brill remembers visiting her sister in her dorm room at Evergreen State College to find her reading Ram Dass. Like him, Lieberman became a spiritual person in the widest sense and completely free of dogma. “She wasn’t judgmental, didn’t care about acquiring material things and gave everybody the benefit of the doubt,” said her sister.
Lieberman was a founding faculty member of The Northwest School, where she taught ceramics for 28 years, retiring because of her illness.
Michael Bell, who gradated in 2009, wrote of her in the Northwest
School Magazine that she taught with “mystical Peruvian music” in the
background.
Help was easy to receive whenever you needed it, because Karla was
always available to teach you how to construct anything you wanted. She
knew that a few students may be too timid to ask for help, so she would
patrol the studio and take it upon herself to help those who looked
stuck. She always provided constructive criticism on any piece, and was
more than willing to take whatever steps necessary to help you improve.
Sometimes Karla would just walk up and share a book on ceramics that
she thought would spark up some new ideas. Every day, five minutes
before the end of class, you would hear her tell the class, “It’s
cleanup time in the valley, and this is the valley.”
Blue Pagoda Boat Float #2 2002 ceramic, glass 14.5″ H x 18″ W x 10″ D 2002
With fellow artist Kirk Bell, Lieberman created the Garden of Everyday Miracles in a vacant, overgrown lot in Fremont. When it was razed in favor of condos, Robert Zverina expressed his indignation, here. Liberman did not express hers. It existed, acquiring temples made of old TV sets, ceramic balls and pink flamingos. “Everything’s temporary,” she said at the time.
She traveled widely, most frequently to India, Costa Rica and Nepal. One a week she met with friends who chanted through a prayed service. Her work is in the collections of the Fred Jones
Junior Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, OK, the Johnson County College/Nerman Museum
of Contemporary Art, KS, and the Museum of Northwest Art. In Seattle she is represented by the Patricia Cameron Gallery.
She is survived by her parents William. S. Lieberman and Mae
Samuelson Lieberman, both of Mercer Island; her sister
Joan, brother-in-law John, nephew Alex and niece Danielle of Bellevue. A memorial service will be held on March 23 at 2 p.m. at Seattle Unity Church, 200 8th Ave. N., with a reception to follow.
Jerry Pethick’s Le Semeur/Sunlight and Flies, 1984/2002, is at the 
A History for Greg (Mountie Red), 1993-1995
Black Retort Travelogue, 1991/1992
Another view of the confrontation, 
Opening February 20 at the 
At the opening of MacDonald’s exhibit at 
One