Kershisnik

Brian Kershisnik is the youngest of a happy and widely traveled family of sons.  His father's work as a petroleum geologist took them to various continents across the globe where his mother unfailingly set up a home filled with music, great food and active conversation, furnished with treasures and artifacts from their travels and hosting frequent parties and exotic slide shows of their globetrotting family life. Brian grew up happily dividing his time between his dad's overseas assignments and summers spent with cousins in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a friendly, curious kid and with no notion at all of what he wanted to be when he grew up.  Though he drew often to entertain himself, it never occurred to him that people actually did that for a living.  Finding himself unceremoniously graduated from high school after an emergency evacuation from Pakistan abruptly ended his senior year, he applied to the University of Utah where his brother was attending school.  A General Architecture class from Peter Goss and a ceramics class from Dorthy Bearnsen began to focus his interests.  After serving as a missionary in Northern Europe he determined to study ceramics at Brigham Young University and then architecture at the University of Utah.  During his first year of art studies he met Joe and Lee Bennion and arranged to spend the summer working in Joe’s pottery.  After some months it became apparent that Brian was no potter and Lee suggested he try something with her paint box.  Painting changed everything.