Iguana Galleries

Janet Bajorek is a ceramic and wood sculptor based in Los Gatos, California.  She has been recognized both locally and internationally over the last forty years for her unique, stylized, and often whimsical ceramic figures.  She enjoys ceramic sculpting “... because of the tactile experience, the satisfaction of creating a three dimensional object, and the excitement of the unpredictable results of firing clay and glazes.”  The subjects of her work are wide-ranging, and include musicians, surfers, biker gangs, women and their cats, cityscapes, pressing social and political issues, the many far flung places she's traveled, and the characters she's met along the way.

​

She is particularly drawn to interesting shapes and materials.  About twenty years ago this led Bajorek to a pile of industrial wood patterns left by her father and brother, who were both industrial wood patternmakers (also known as model makers).  She decided she would recycle these wooden shapes and use them to create large abstract wall sculptures.  Striking, and totally original, Bajorek’s wood assemblages are a bright and colorful piece of history.

​

Janet Bajorek started her undergraduate studies in sociology at the University of Redlands, California, before transferring to the University of the Americas in Mexico City where she graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Sociology, History, and Art Studies.  She has studied painting, sculpture, and ceramics in Los Angeles and New York and has exhibited on both coasts and in Minnesota.  She now lives and works in Los Gatos in the California Bay Area, where she is the owner and director of Iguana Galleries and Tekart California.  Janet is an exhibiting member of the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California.