Gerardo Barrientos

Reiko Niwa Berg

My vision was to explore movement in clay.  I have been involved in design work that included circular forms with mechanical strength and sense of movement.  I like to combine the aesthetic beauty of free form sculpture to enhance my art pieces with a depth of color.  The pieces I create demonstrate movement or free flowing design that elevates the static clay sculpture into a more free flowing design.

Caroline Blackburn

Abstract painting, architecture, fashion, and nature inform and inspire the ceramic vessels I create. Trained as a painter, my work focuses on bringing a freshness and immediacy to each piece through color, form, surface, and texture. Every work is highly considered whether it is thrown on a wheel, hand built, or a combination of both techniques. Glazes perform at a level that engages the viewer in an abstract skin generated through the glazing process. In this piece, the white mat glaze reminds me of the luminosity of the moon. I have drawn directly on the piece during the glazing process to further activate the surface and respond to the form. While investigating an interest in plasticity each work produces a continual shift between surface, texture, color, and object providing a contemporary sense of life that is very personal and universal at the same time.

Zygote Blum

The basic tenet of my approach to studio ceramics pivots on the idea that the familiarity of function allows for the free exploration of form… Refined form allows me focus creating complex surfaces using a swarm of hand cut paper stencils, contrasting slips, and textured glazes. Surfaces that are subtle allegories that deal with issues of shared personal significance. These are functional narratives that are made to dovetail into individual private worlds. It's work that's made to be selected by choice. It's work that's created out of necessity.

Pauline Cabello

Art is how I release my emotions and feelings. As a child, I spent a lot of time indoors drawing and coloring because I have polio. So art has always been my refuge. In 1997 I took up sculpture and found it to be very therapeutic and fulfilling for me, for it was at a time in my life that I embraced it with all my heart and soul as I did as a child. In the beginning my art displayed more of my Native American and Mexican heritage. When creating my artwork I sense the emotion or a deep connected with the clay. I also like to work with texture and color with the form of the piece determining its color and texture. I still create sculptures that express my connection to my heritage. A lot of my pieces have a dual spirit in them: in an animal form there may be a sense of humanity; in a human form, there may be some sense of animal; there is evil underlying the good, good underlying the evil, turmoil underlying serenity, serenity underlying turmoil. As my life evolves, with up and downs so does my art. Then there is just ART! IMAGINATION! EXPLORATION! Family is my Soul, Art is my Sprit, Life is living to the Fullest!

Jan Davids

The universal journey brings unexpected challenges and rewards. The marks left upon us are a compass that points to the tales of the miles traveled and the experiences endured. When the personal spirit becomes bent, the sense of a withering heart can claim our migration. Refusal to delve into these dark regions make it improbable to trust the journey towards the exhilaration of life and joy. Having "soul" cannot be attained without holding the darkness while reaching for the light.

Tom Decker

"All Grown Up" by Tom Decker is a large-scale polychrome terracotta sculpture made to explore the formal abstraction of highly personal narrative content. It was made it 2011 as part of a series of ceramics sculptures to express the artist's understanding of the dynamics of familial relationships as he and his siblings experienced the passing of their father earlier in the same year. Aspects of organic growth are boldly present in the gestural handling of the sculptural form. Through a process of structural restoration, multiple layers of chromatic and textural surface are built up and then stripped away from the enveloping ceramic glaze to expose the durable core of terra cotta.

Caroline Earley

My vessels are formal explorations where form, vestigial appendages and arrangements are combined to create conversations within each form and between multiple forms. I want the works to occupy an undefined space between reductive minimalist geometry and curvilinear baroque exaggeration. Vestigial appendages protrude from stacked forms, investigating proportional relationships and the unsettled state between balance and imbalance. Thrown and altered vessels, based on biomorphic forms, are hybridized samplings of pots, the body, mutations, self-replicating or dysfunctional systems. Thrown vessels are closed, assembled and arranged to create groups with the potential to expand or perhaps recombine and continually remake the configuration, presenting an ever – expanding potentiality.

Gina Lawson Egan

I began sculpting the human head and the figure while teaching at First Street Gallery and Art Center. The early sculptural heads began just smaller than life size. Since then I have explored many possibilities in size and form. Personally I find that the simple image of the face to be a powerful image to work from. There are endless possibilities with the inclusion of other elements that I add intuitively. While these elements add up to a narrative, it is not a specific story that I am telling but one that is left for the viewer to explore. I gravitate towards animals, architectural dwellings, caves and other forms from nature I like to use humor and light hearted imagery to address larger ideas. This intuitive method of working is gratifying, as I enjoy this mental process. My studio beckons me when I have an unfinished piece to complete. I do not like to lose the natural momentum that builds when these sculptures are taking form.

Dina S. Finzi

I have been inspired by organic forms and contour lines throughout my artistic life. I love their sensuality and femininity. I always return to these elements whenever I go off in other directions with my clay work. They are my roots in both two dimensional and three dimensional forms. My pots are three dimensional drawings whose subjects are usually plants in my garden. I have a strong connection to my garden as I raise the plants, often from seeds, and care for them through the seasons of their lives. I draw and photograph them at all stages of their growth. I work in porcelain on the potter's wheel. Its smooth skin and the forms I throw lend themselves to the surfaces I favor. I derive great satisfaction from drawing onto and carving into a porcelain piece. I can anticipate how the glazes will help to enhance the surface by pooling and flowing over the pot. This anticipation is like a fluid dance in my mind. I learn something each time I throw, carve and fire. It takes a lot of time and patience to fully realize a piece but I can't wait to begin the process anew.

Anthony Foo

COLONY is one of my newer paper clay and wire mesh sculptures. This piece is made up of three subunits which can be arranged in various configurations, each giving a different feel and perspective. I like working this way as it allows the piece to be manipulated thus creating a "new" sculpture. Different people will arrange the work differently and this brings in the element of interactivity to the piece. I've chosen the natural white of the Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay as my palette. No glazes were used. The work is fired to Cone 04 and then sealed with a clear coat. Website: www.anthonyfoo.com Blog: http://antjhfoo.blogspot.com

David Gilbaugh

Through creating ceramic sculptures and pottery I explore life and the irony of renewal through death. Trees are the primary subject of my work and human emergence is its' theme. Through this creative work I engage the interrelationship between humanity and nature. I focus on trees because I have a natural love of them from my youth. As a child I spent my summers with my brother roaming the woods of northern Illinois, and as an adolescent I spent them backpacking the forests of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Observing the tree excites my creative expression because it demonstrates the promise of renewal in the events of birth, the processes of aging, and the inevitability and promise of new life through death and decay. In this way life continuously takes on evolved and more beautiful forms through both creation and evolution.

Mark Goudy

My work is an exploration in shape and pattern, using the enclosed vessel as the underlying form. These vessels are constructed from asymmetric curved surfaces that project a unique contour with each viewing angle. The interior space is intentionally hidden, leaving the contents to the imagination, metaphorically containing perhaps hopes, dreams, or spirits. These rounded forms are meant to be held and, when set on a flat surface, gently rock before coming to rest at their own natural balance point.
My approach is to combine ancient methods of stone-burnishing and earthenware firing with computer-aided shape design to produce talismans that fuse traditional and modern aesthetics. Surface markings are created by painting metallic salt watercolors on bisque-fired clay. These watercolors permeate the clay body, and become a permanent part of the surface when fired. I have a strong affinity for intricate abstract patterns, ones that can't be fully comprehended with a single glance, an invitation to in-depth exploration.
These ceramic forms echo the geometries of nature: waterworn stones, shells, seedpods, expansive desert landscapes, the Milky Way on a moonless night.
You can find more of my work online at www.thundercloudstudio.com.

Patricia Griffin

On my daily walk, I follow a bluff trail overlooking the central coast of California where I live.  What I experience here shows up in woodcut-style imagery on my forms — the rhythm of the sea and patterns of pines needles, rocky coastline and grassy meadows.
Most of my pieces start on the wheel, and then are altered by cutting a dart, squaring a rim or creating an oval shape from the original round form.  In this current series of work, I etch line and patterns, creating woodcut-style imagery. My desire is to create art that people will use and enjoy in their homes, pieces that make them smile and help make ordinary moments special.

Christine Hackworth

I have always derived pleasure from creating with my hands. The mud pies of my childhood have given way to more complex forms, as has the mud.  For me clay is the perfect medium. With clay there is a visceral connection between my hands and my mind.

I am drawn to the human form and its vessel like qualities. I started out by wheel throwing and altering the forms I created and then gradually moved to hand building them. Through the hand building process I have been able to express my ideas while dealing with the challenges of the medium. For me, the process along with problem solving and the resulting solutions is a large part of the appeal of working with clay.

My sculptures reflect the human condition and its connections to each other, the world, and the environment.  They also explore the connections between individuality and family.  Between the desire to be an individual and the need to be part of a group and to fit in to society. The sculpted figures are part of the space they inhabit. Through simple gestures, a tilt of the head or a shrug of the shoulder they give the appearance of interacting with each other.

The figures I build are simple; requiring a minimum amount of detail yet retain the capacity to engage the viewer through non-verbal communication. Some are open to the world and connected to each other and some are more private and alone. And like many families, some are willing to share their feelings while others hide the darkness within. Without verbal cues the audience is left to themselves to create a dialogue through distance, orientation, and posture.

Don Hall

Aloha Vessel:  This vessel was hand built using stoneware clay.    The decoration was created using mason stain mixed with porcelain slip applied with a brush.    It was fired in a raku kiln that is fueled with used vegetable oil, and reduced in newspaper. I hope you enjoy it.

Goddess of the Fishes: The Vessel was hand built using stoneware clay.   The decoration was created using mason stain mixed with porcelain slip and applied with a brush.   If was fired to cone 5 an electric kiln.  I hope you enjoy it.

Reem Hammad

Whether it is sculptural, decorative or functional designs, my focus is on creating aesthetically balanced and eyecatching designs that speak with the viewer, tell their story, or weave together the past and the present.
'Water and Fire', is part of a series of work inspired by the Amphora vessel shape used in Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean cultures to transport and store wine, olive oil, grains and other essential goods. To me, the Amphora shape embodies the female figure. She carries life and abundant goodness. She is beautiful, adventurous and travels near and far always on a mission. Here this Amphora struggles to save every drop of her collected water from the heat of the sun. This struggle is the same as (mother) earth's struggle to stay balanced with all its elements and maintain life.

Jason Hess

A desire to have objects that fulfill specific purposes inspires me to make functional pots. The infinite and elusive variety of texture and color attainable through the various making and firing processes that I use has generated an interest in presentation. I enjoy presenting my work so that a viewer might notice and appreciate subtle differences in form and surface. By grouping similar forms of differing size and color I hope to compose a visually dynamic display, which invites the viewer to enjoy the tactile nature of each individual piece and how they relate to one another.

Deborah Jenkins

I am drawn to decorative, functional ceramic ware. Hand painted fish platters and blue and white commemorative plates always catch my eye. From those ideas I started to work on my homage to Yosemite in the form of a commemorative plate, but the traditional blue and white decorative format did not give me what I was looking for. It was not until I used a red earthenware ground with flat black images did the work feel right. Once I hit on the right combinations I developed images of animals native to Yosemite to illustrate. Ursus Americanus (Black Bear) is the first of that series.

Shane M. Keena

aving grown up near the ocean, I spent a considerable portion of my later childhood exploring the shallow tide pools of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. My recollection of discovering various life-forms occupying these shallow tidal regions, along with being an avid scuba diver for over twenty years has had a direct influence on my work. However, while many of the diverse marine forms are sources of visual and formal influence, I also draw inspiration from sources ranging from microscopic images of pollen to the exotic durian and jackfruits of Southeast Asia. Inspired by the work of Ernst Haeckel, his 1904 book of drawings, Kunstformen der Natur/Art Forms of Nature has served as a visual thesaurus for my work over the years. I am a guarded person by nature, prickly on the outside but deeply vulnerable on the inside. The objects I make are the creative by-products of trying life experiences; long and personal investigations of an abusive childhood and recently, the birth of my daughter and the death of my mother from cancer. It was during the last six months of her life that I also became a first time father of a little girl and it was this overlap of these two life changing events that ramped up the aggressiveness of the work. Having a daughter heightened the protective lens I now view life through. The primal need to protect my little girl, along with coming to grips with the loss of my mother began to resonate within my work. While my art has always been cantankerous, the openings began to recede deeper into the vessel, becoming more protected with more and more "sub-interiors" protecting that gutty "soft spot". The parallel between the experiences of life and death began to blur into each-other within the context of my work. The forms and behaviors of the natural world are my visual inspiration, and with the vessel as my vehicle, my ceramic sculptures echo the characteristics of my guarded personality. More specifically, my work reflects a keen interest in structural defense mechanisms and behaviors found in the natural world. The way a sea urchin securely locks itself into the crevice of a rock when threatened, or the way an anemone quickly recoils when prodded are responses that have always fascinated me. My forms swell with bravado, often adopting aggressively inflated or recoiling postures in a fight-or-flight state, always protecting the vulnerable, "gutty" interior. I aim to create enigmatic and uncategorized art-forms that seductively lure the viewer in only to physically repel if clumsily prodded. My agenda is not to recreate what already exists in the world, but rather to create objects that are hybrids; the result of a blending of ideas begging the question; "is it animal, mineral, or vegetable?" Through this fusion, I aim for my work to come to life within arm's reach, where eyesight blurs into touch. Combined with exteriors that flaunt thousands of dazzling lustered spines or noxious and toxic encrusted skins, I weave a vibrant electric warning palette into my sculptures through a marriage of color and form. By juxtaposing the semiotics of these brilliant and alarming colors in combination with spiny physical defense barriers, I stress the presence of my guarded nature within the work. At the end of the day, my artwork is the manifestation of my exploration of the self and the investigation of territoriality, defense mechanisms, and most importantly, vulnerability.

David Kiddie

The ceramic sculpture, "Infiltrator" is one piece in an ongoing series of works that are inspired by the clustered and patterned structure of biological cellular elements found in the microscopic realm. The "Infiltrator" provides an accessible interpretation of a hybrid cell cluster that has been transformed through the inclusion of synthetic (geometric) elements. This is similar to how cellular biologists have theorized, how foreign elements can be inserted into cellular clusters as means to enhance or disfunctionalize them and perhaps find cures for diseases. Glazed surfaces enhance and highlight the form as biologists often colorize what they are viewing through a microscope to provide clarity.

Carol Ann Klimek

Horses have been my subject matter for fifteen years. Although I do not have a horse and only road a horse once when I was young, I am attracted to them for their beauty and essence.

Clara Lanyi

For almost 20 years, I hand built large ceramic sculpture, creating imaginary botanical/organic forms. This work was inspired in part by Ernst Haeckel, a 19th century scientist and artist. The pieces engaged the viewer at human scale and explored the wonder of nature and such subjects as genetic engineering.

In 2009, I was hired into a faculty position where I was required to teach throwing. In learning how to use the potter’s wheel, my interest shifted to the smaller, intimate scale common to ceramic work created for domestic daily use, and the challenges and rewards posed by creating art in a format circumscribed by utilitarian demands.

My work continues to involve science and nature, bringing formulas, numbers, geometry and naturalist illustrations into play as thought provoking design elements on functional ware. I am interested in these elements as symbols which read as modern hieroglyphics, their true meaning accessible only to the initiated. Equations are often placed on ware paired with insects. These juxtapositions suggest a reverence which encompasses all things in the natural world, from graphical representations employed by human minds to explain vastly complicated theories, to the commonplace miracle of a bug walking around and tending to its own business.

Clara Lanyi has a BA in Fine Arts from UC Santa Cruz, BFA in Ceramics from Alfred University College of Ceramics, and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is currently a full time instructor and head of the Sierra Vista campus ceramics program at Cochise College in Arizona.

Clark Marshall

During my year and a half tenure as a graduate student of Renaissance Art History with Syracuse University in Florence, I was surprised to find that some of the most breathtaking works of art I studied were not the paintings and sculptures I learned about as an undergraduate. Rather, I was most drawn to the beautiful manuscripts I researched in order to learn more about the Renaissance artists. The stunning calligraphy on the vellum and paper pages of Florence's archives, had a profound impact on my aesthetic. Whether Michelangelo, Leonardo, Ghiberti, Domenico Veneziano, or Piero della Francesca, the calligraphy of the Florentine masters create of themselves masterpieces. Having first majored in ceramics at Utah State University, I was able to develope an image transfer process so that I could use these texts as a design element in my work. I start with old copies or facsimiles of primarily Florentine documents, make detailed silkscreens out of the images, and bring them to life on each piece. The texts are often placed vertically rather than horizontally, and often transfer onto the piece in their mirror image, emphasizing the beauty and the aesthetic of the writings, rather than their content. My more recent endeavors with image transfer have led me to explore the lesser-known field of Water Soluble Metal Salts (WSMS) on cone 10 porcelain. The surface of porcelain when coated with a WSMS yields a smooth mat finish, which would be difficult to obtain with a conventional glaze. By high-firing my works, the unique colors and historical echos are preserved and brought to the attention and enjoyment of the viewer.

Presley Martin

I am attracted to common things that feel like a normal part of my everyday life. Ordinary moments become opportunities to observe their behavior. Poured clay slip on paper creates a stain and a curl; graphite rubbed on a surface picks up and amplifies subtle textural distrubances, a simple squirt of slip forms a shape that invites touch. I limit myself to simple actions that allow the relationships between the materials to control the final results. I become an observer as much as a maker, as complexity emerges from the repetition of those simple actions.

Amiko Matsuo

My personal understanding of ceramics continues to shift into a variety of frameworks. Inspired by the rhyton form, these assemblies use animal and human elements to reflect on the protean dilemmas of science and genetic technologies. By piecing together cast, and molded sections, the works strive to be both seductive and uncanny. My current body of work is influenced by Nagasaki and the cross-cultural exchange that occurred in the 1600s between the Japanese and the Dutch, who were called Koumo-jin “red-haired” people. Mining this rich historical territory reveals bilateral dialogues and aesthetic connections that unravel interesting narratives through commercial Delft and Imari wares. The underglazed ‘etsuke’ style paintings reference the Dutch trade vernacular, while specific alterations were intended to literally highlight and point to certain breaks in narratives and history.

Gale McCall

Candice Methe

When I was a child I found myself wanting to be a little bird, able to escape and fly away to where I would be safe and happy.  The natural world has always been a place of healing and comfort for me and I regard this realm as a bountiful source of inspiration. Birds suggest freedom for they have the ability to occupy the earth as well as the sky, and defy gravity with their wings and hallow bones.
Memory also has the ability to occupy two worlds. Experiences are born in the physical and move to a place in which the mind can only go. Like aviaries, memories can feel the weightiness of gravity. Sometimes grounded, they peck and dig until they pull out a big juicy worm, while other times memories can be soaring high above, completely out of reach, almost out of sight.
While birds and memories sometimes occupy an ethereal place, clay has a very physical, grounded presence. By carving out the surface of my ceramics I imprint something deeply personal and unique.  Clay is of the earth and a pots weight and form are dependent upon me, the maker. When I create a piece I am committing that artwork to memory.
Creating work that is functional, yet alluring and engaging to an audience is the basis of my work. By combining the symbol of the bird, and the idea of memory, with clay, I aim to create a poetic connection between the physical and the inconspicuous. For me, my work is an exploration and connection to personal psychological spaces. When someone uses my work it is an invitation, and an opportunity, to build, and create moments for themselves.

Lee Middleman

In my signature work, I create classic forms with surface textures that give the work energy and vitality.  I seek to create patterns and textures that explore the organic interplay between order and randomness as found in Nature.

My goal is to pursue the interplay of shape, surface texture, ordered patterns, and random effects so that work is created that intrigues the eye and demands to be touched.  Although my work is functional, it is often prized as decorative.

Marlene Miller

My primary interest is giving expression to interior realms both personal and universal. As an artist, I have always been drawn to, and I continuously draw upon, what is mystifying in life. My work examines the relationship between power and vulnerability, the comic and tragic, wonder and horror, the holy and corrupt. Working in an improvisational mode, I experience the creative process as an intimate conversation with my materials and the figures that emerge. I love the medium of clay because it is inherently sensual, responsive, and sometimes maddeningly unpredictable. The fluidity of the clay allows me to build and alter forms with great immediacy. With tools and sometimes simply my hands and fingers, I pound, scrape, cut, dig and gouge, searching for something I have never seen before. I build up and tear apart repeatedly, looking to be moved and transfixed. Once found, I stop, leaving intact the evidence of my struggle. As a child in kindergarten, I recall standing at my easel, painting with abandon, feeling a sense of exhilaration and ownership. In recent years, I have been striving to recapture that same freedom and unselfconsciousness by letting go of self-censorship and feeling the need to prettify. Increasingly, I am aiming for a more instinctual and authentic form of self-expression.

Kate Nelson

My work explores a fascination with negative space and gestalt theory. My interest lies in capturing the interaction between two or more bodies/objects during a single moment. Working indirectly from the subject my works are abstract and gestural focusing on directional planes. This allows emphasis to be placed on the non-descript area between; creating a permanent shifting state of tension.

Janet Neuwalder

 “Celadonscape” is created out of multiple porcelain elements, formed individually with the intention of coming together in the work.  The exact composition however, was not known until I had all the elements in front of me and started assembling. The sculptural elements are formed out of porcelain slip smeared on paper forms, some cut from solid blocks of porcelain, and others pinched freely. The use of the silver and white Japanese handmade paper serves as a backdrop for the setting of this piece.  The celadon forms and the luminous white and ivory forms harkens back to the true beauty, aesthetics, and essence of Japanese Art.

Vincent Palacios

In this recent work I have been exploring different ways of drawing on ceramic forms. Instead of drawing with my own hand, I have been employing decal images of different line qualities from different time periods and different artists to compose and collage my drawings. In a way it is like drawing with someone else's hands or like conducting a piece of music. In the same manner that musical artists are sampling sounds and music of other artists to reconstruct into their own compositions, I am sampling images to reconstruct into intense, layered, mythological narratives, which have a very different rhythm than flat drawings. Some of the themes that are emerging are Biblical, Mythological and Scientific in nature. I have been exploring the origins of our species, the moral dilemma of good and evil, the role of man in nature, and the interface of science, technology and mythology.

John Palmer

Liza Riddle

"For me, a successful piece casts an elegant shadow, feels like a weathered pebble from the shore, and has surface decoration that mimics and celebrates the colors and patterns of nature." — Liza Riddle
I seek to create work that evokes a sense of wonder and mystery, forms that beckon to be held and admired. I delight in closely observing and then interpreting natural objects and events – weathered boulders on a mountain slope, wind ripples on a gray blue sea, the sensual shoulder line of a human figure – their rhythms, patterns and forces have greatly inspired my work. My vessels are hand-coiled, carefully stone-burnished to a smooth finish, then bisque fired at earthenware temperatures. I paint backgrounds and draw hieroglyphic patterns using water soluble metal chlorides – iron, nickel, cobalt, and other salts. Through trial and error, I have developed my own mixtures of metal salts and techniques for applying these almost transparent “watercolors". The solutions permeate the non-vitrified clay and, once fired, the metals transform, revealing the earth’s elemental palette of colors, from the soft sage green tones of nickel, to iron-rich red, to brilliant cobalt sky blue, with halos encircling galaxies of dots.

Carol Rives

I have worked in various media throughout my life, studying painting and glass at the School of The Museum of Fine Art in Boston, as well as the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. My training demanded that I be held accountable for honesty of purpose and possessing a truly critical eye toward the quality of the work, which are necessary for a lifetime in art.  My subject matter has generally dealt with animals and figures – imaginary and real – secured in safe places. I am also intrigued by the concept of inanimate objects having feelings and an inner life.

In recent years my work has focused more on animals.  They play such an important part in many of our lives, and I have always been drawn to them: the way they express themselves, their shapes, and the fact that they almost always forgive.  In my current work, my concern is less with details than with the feelings that the animal evokes.  I try to say as much as possible with the least amount of refinery, striving to keep a sense of life breathing from my forms.  The tactile nature of clay provides a great opportunity for expressive gesture, and I prefer to leave the evidence of my touch, moving quickly to maintain a sense of physicality.  My aim is that my sculptures convey the energy and essence of the subjects they represent.

My pieces are often fired repeatedly from high to lower temperatures, offering me a huge color palette to draw from and an increased depth and layering as a result.  The process offers so many surprises: one never knows exactly what will come out of the kiln ~

Tom Collins of the Albuquerque Journal describes my animal miniatures and wall-hung pieces as “fast, loose and amazingly affecting evocations....The visible pressure of each finger stroke somehow has molded (Joseph’s) visage and more importantly, his personality.”

Susie Rubenstein

Ihave always been attracted to hand made objects of daily use: bowls, wooden spoons, textiles that enliven and define our routines. They are reflections and often celebrations of how we live, what we need to make ourselves comfortable. The pots I make are part of that tradition; they are functional, wheel thrown porcelain and stoneware, high fired in a reduction atmosphere. They are stretched and altered after they are thrown reflecting landscapes, cityscapes, and organic forms. Patterns that wrap around the pots are inspired by the gesture of growing plants, agricultural fields, and the random arrangement of fallen leaves winding around three dimensions, gracefully integrating surface, form and function. Typically I throw multiples of a form because the rows of pots are pleasing. Each part of the process yields groups of forms that create their own studio landscape. Every kiln load of pots becomes a journal entry, recording a block of time through objects. It is not unlike gardening. We are tracking a season with physical evidence; it is an engaging and satisfying way to work. The challenge, objective and adventure are to make spirited and beautiful pieces for daily use.

Adrian Sandstrom

In my current work, each vessel is a combination of several colors allowing the imagination to flourish. Each vessel is also adorned with many circles. Circles represent many different emotions and ideas for each as does color. For me each circle represents "zero". The main premise behind the circle is that in each action, word, thought, or experience we all start at zero, or nothing, and therefore have the potential of everything and anything. The color selection of each piece only exasperates the same concept. The color spectrum starts at white, a blank palate with the potential for everything and anything.

Jan Schachter & Peggy Foreman

For 25 years Peggy Forman and Jan Schachter have collaborated. Jan throws or builds the forms out of porcelain and bisques them. Peggy then takes them to her studio and draws/paints/prints images inspired by the form Jan has made. Many of her images originate with drawings on paper she has made working from a live model. Her drawings express a long-time love of watercolor painting which began in Peggy's college days. Drawing and painting on clay is an exceptional challenge since what you draw is rarely what you get from the final firing. There are many surprises, both good and bad. Jan's clay work has evolved significantly over time from tight exacting vessels to clay pieces that are much looser, more lively and broader in range. Jan and Peggy continue to love the challenge and surprise of working out projects together.

Jill Schulman

I am led by my intuition and unconscious meaning lurking beneath the surface, and driven toward examining the choices women make, while fending off expectations. My desire and fear have led me to fill up the space around me, leaving little room for “ someone“.
“Woman Repeated “, is an attempt  to free myself from self-imposed constraints, possibly to see “ what happens when the selfs rhythms and certainties are shaken “.
The choice of using transfer techniques on clay, underscores the notion of repeating patterns in life as well as in my work.

Vincent Suez

My work has its basis in traditional pottery. First and foremost I consider myself an artist/ potter. I draw and paint, using traditional ceramic processes to achieve particular affects on my work in order to exploit and develop form. My concern with nature is revealed through my use of animal and bird imagery. Marks of stamps, inscribed lines, and the touch of brush emulate this fantasy in nature. Included in this colorful landscape are dragonflies, a dash of gold a glimpse of purple and brilliant blues. Saying that, I am not particularly interested in a specific genus but rather in that fleeting moment the leap of faith if you will when they are suspended in air for a brief moment, the quick yet magic moment when they seem oblivious to gravity, suspended, or "braking" as they gracefully land on the most delicate of branches. The dragonflies' rush and dip across the puddles leaving only a trace. Included in this rapture is my use of creatures imbued with the human condition. The intimacies of these anthropomorphic lovers expose my wit and curiosity of the human condition. To paraphrase Susan Peterson's quote of Hamada, each morning while I'm having my coffee, I sit and watch with delight as the birds and dragonflies dance and converse around the feeders. I am amazed because the birds always carry on the same prattle, yet it is always different and continues to delight and amaze me and I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this venture. The drawn landscape dwells somewhere inside and it is with great anticipation and patience that I wait to open the kiln and expose joy (sometimes grief) of life. Interspersed with this are both personal and worldly experiences, such as religious personifications as well as events like Sadam's burning of the oil wells in Kuwait and the 911 catastrophe. The giving and sharing of my pots will enhance ones life. My pots are made to experience and use.

Susan Willis

My focus is on creating a strong visual element, a pleasing combination of a positive form and negative space. I find clay the most responsive media for developing new ideas, as well as offering a rich history of ceramic tradition for exploration.