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As a studio potter, I work diligently to make well-crafted wares for everyday people. It’s seemingly less about the “ritual of the table” and more about respecting a long tradition of craftsmen before me and discovering my own voice. As a contemporary potter, I often look to past traditions for inspiration. My native state of North Carolina, of course, offers a deep well of talented potters, both folk and contemporary, to look towards for inspiration.
Simplicity in form offers a broad surface for me to embellish with lines, patterns, and drawings. Before I was introduced to the ceramics arts, I did a fair amount of illustration before and during art school. The combination of three-dimensional forms and two-dimensional drawings was a natural fusion of both my love of drawing and pottery, art and craft. It is my intention to bring together clear and abstract markings to engage the viewer to look closely at how design relates to the form of the pot.
Maria Dondero makes pots and teaches in Athens, Georgia where she lives with her husband and twin boys. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia in 2008 and has worked as a studio potter and professor ever since. In February 2016, Dondero started Southern Star Studio, a community ceramic center with space for artists to work and present their ceramics in the gallery.
Her own work, marmalade pottery, focuses on kickwheel thrown functional pieces to be used everyday. Each piece is unique, with its own story to bring to your home. The pots are intended to be used daily, hopefully bringing a moment of lightness to one’s generally hectic life.
The mid-range earthenware pots have an aesthetic that draws on the history of ceramics. While subtly referencing pottery traditions from around the world, Maria intuitively sketches images on her ceramic surfaces from her surroundings, grounding the pots in the Georgia soil. She is represented by galleries across the country, and exhibits her work nationally and internationally.
Originally from Madison Wisconsin, Daniel currently lives in North Carolina, where he is a long term Resident Artist (21’-24’) at the Penland School of Craft. He holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2011). Daniel was Core Fellow at the Penland school of Craft (15’-17’) and participated in a variety of residencies including the Jentel Foundation, AZ West, The Bright Angle, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and Western New Mexico University. His work has been shown throughout the US in a variety of group and solo exhibitions.
This collection of work is all made from slipcast porcelain. The process of slipcasting utilizes plaster molds in which liquid porcelain (casting slip) is poured into the molds, and the plaster pulls the water content out of the slip forming a shell which is the resulting form, object or pot. This method was developed to readily recreate identical forms in a reliable fashion, I use the same method but have altered the process in such a way that I can construct a variety of forms from the same mold parts. This collection was been designed and constructed from a library of interchangeable plaster molds parts that can be assembled in a variety of forms which makes them all related to one another for a cohesive collection of functional ceramic pieces. Furthermore the molds were designed so that I can work into the surface of the pots by inlaying colored or black and white porcelain to compose some striking patterns.
Although I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, as a child I spent every possible moment in the country exploring the woods and playing in creeks. The earthy tones and minimalism of my functional pots reflect the nature that surrounded me as a child. I gravitate towards a pot that is casual, quiet, and appears to have grown right out of the spot it sits. My aesthetic falls into a minimalist category, less is more for me. I am drawn to and hope to create pots that have an organic and natural quality to them. These are the pots that pull me in. Their irregularities give these pots a personality not unlike our own physical presence. I juxtapose minimalism, simple clean lines, designs that are unadorned but have a strong presence with aspects that are loose, organic, and casual.
My stoneware ceramic work is treadle wheel thrown, and then modified with hand built components. Surface treatments are natural ash or soda, slips, and applied glaze. My work is fired in either a wood or soda kiln.
Susan Feagin was born in Burbank, California and when she was 11 years old her family
relocated across the country to the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. She earned a BFA in
ceramics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1992. Susan started
taking clay classes at the Penland School of Craft in 1994 and was a Core Fellow there
from 1998-2000. In 2007 Susan finished an MFA in ceramics from University of Florida.
Susan has been the clay studio coordinator at Penland School since 2007 and maintains
a small home clay studio in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
I make pots with coarse materials on a slow treadle wheel in my home studio in the mountains of western North Carolina. I find inspiration in the common language of the historical pottery of our world's rich and diverse civilizations and seek to emphasize our connectedness by alchemizing those forms into fresh and contemporary pottery.
I currently make porcelain pots, fired in my high fire gas reduction kiln and in wood kilns throughout western North Carolina. My work centers around two of my most passionate loves: food and flowers. I strive to make classic, elegant
shapes that serve to elevate their everyday uses.
My pots are drawings. They carry with them thought and feeling and memory. Each piece is an attempt to realize an idealized form in my head. I work rapidly and in series because these attempts are never wholly successful and I’m always eager to try again. The work is never done and, for me, beauty is found in the process.
I make things with intent to entice the user to enjoy everyday activities, inviting participation, promoting hospitality. Starting a day with coffee in a comfortable mug, going out into the garden to fill a bud vase with freshly picked flowers, then ending the day with table set with plates and bowls ,full of food, candles lit in candlesticks for an intimate dinner.
When in the studio, I like to play with pottery forms that are then enhanced by decorated surfaces. I subtly suggest figure and character in each piece, striving for them to have a personality of their own. When I am outside, I pay attention to patterns in nature, adapting these inspirations in my mark making. Firing these pots in my salt kiln, the warmth of stoneware clay combined with my palette of earth tones enhance and invite you to interact.
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My ceramic work intends to honor wild animals on our shared planet. From an early age, I fostered admiration for the natural world while growing up on my family’s farm among the biodiversity of Southeastern Virginia. Working in my home studio next to the farm, I sculpt realistic animals who are singular sculptures or correspond with vessels and altered forms. Each animal is presented in gestures of significance and integrity, aiming to invoke an introspective response about personal experiences with animals and the natural world. Many of my pieces include a vessel, which I have often wheel thrown, altered, and carved to integrate with the animal form and become functional in the domestic setting. I enjoy using multiple types of clay and firing methods to create variation and am constantly seeking to achieve that fascinating moment in nature where symmetry and randomness are one.
As a gardener, cook, mother, and potter, I think a lot about food. It makes me happy to serve something I know to be nourishing. I think that is why making pots seems so special to me. I love setting a table full of different bowls and plates and trays containing foods for my family and friends.
When I am in my studio making pots, I consider how I intend the pots to be used. Different pots for different foods. I work in series, and try to improve the form on each successive pot. The rhythm of my kickwheel, and the pace of making slab work are just the right speed for me. When I glaze my pots I consider how foods will be presented in the pottery. I draw bold patterns on my simple pots. I try to bring something of an urban sensibility to traditional forms and techniques.
The environmental implications of my craft are important to me, so I make my firings somewhat carbon neutral by using waste wood from the local saw mill to fire my kiln. I appreciate the connection that tending the fire affords. Wood crackles quietly and I am directly involved with the kiln. I love that the fire and ash make their mark on my pots.
I aim to make pots with integrity that radiate joy.
I never set out to be a potter - I fell in love with a material and one thing led to another. Now that I find myself here though, I live with gratitude. And more than a little bit of joy. Coming from a family of accomplished makers, my work is rooted in function. A recent switch to soda fired earthenware aligns my practice more with core beliefs I hold about sustainability. The change in material and firing temperature has also opened new doors technically and aesthetically. In this day and age making ceramic objects by hand seems almost frivolous. That there is room for them at all is amazing, and to be working with a living material in a time-honored craft that meets people’s daily needs is its own reward.
Currently I am investigating a body of work that highlights the possibilities of deliberate surface decoration enhanced by the more serendipitous variables derived from wood firing. The implementation of ash glaze along with the chaos of the atmosphere inside a wood kiln allows me to give up a small bit of control over the final result, in turn leading to a level of liveliness and abstraction that I could never recreate on my own. I try to think of the wood kiln as a partner in a very collaborative relationship.
I want my work to have a sense of movement and energy. I find myself fascinated with the idea of capturing a moment during peak temperature when the glazes have slid down the profile of a pot, abstracting the surface imagery, and preserving the story of the firing and the passage of time.
I fire my work in a single sprung arch kiln with a bourry box (external firebox).
Beyond the aesthetic qualities that finishing my work in a wood kiln delivers, there are two other factors that make wood firing highly important to me. Firing with wood is not easy - it requires constant attention and consideration, but being with the work from the idea in your head all the way through to implementing the energy required to mature and vitrify the final work is wildly gratifying. The second notion about wood firing is a bit more romantic, but nevertheless true. Firing with wood today means being part of a tradition that goes back thousands of years, and to be a part of that lineage is both humbling and energizing.
In the spring of 2003 a pair of Carolina Wrens took up residence in the rafters of my studio. I watched them raise two sets of babies over that summer. Day in and day out they would move upon the rafter calling down to me, always feeding their babies. The summer of Carolina wrens nestled into the depths of my mind, and over time I began to create work about that experience. In hindsight I can see a similar path in many of the pieces I design. They are born out of something outside of clay, and evolve over time. The theme that reoccurs most often is movement. I am always looking for ways to make the surface or the actual pots seems as though they have captured a moment in time. I balance this movement and life in the pots with a desire to make them functional. This is the challenge that brings me back to the studio eager to make pots.
I came to clay as a second vocation. For 10 years I taught high school biology. I worked to cultivate in my students a desire to explore the world while also encouraging scientific inquiry. I find these two skills serve me just as well in the studio. I left teaching and returned to the classroom as a student at Haywood Community College completing an Associates Degree in Professional Crafts. From there I moved to Floyd, Virginia and worked as an apprentice to Silvie Granatelli, studio potter. I now live and work in my studio/home on the Blue Ridge Parkway, building a life as a studio potter in Floyd, Virginia. It is a conscious choice for me each day to make pots, to entice others to use and share these forms. The choices of where we place our money and energy is an economic statement, but there is also an emotional component and larger cultural significance when people choose to support an artist’s work or make the commitment to create a life as an artist. These decisions shape our world of external objects as well as our inner sense of self. The clear purpose of a bowl - the proxy for hands cupped together holding, carrying, containing that which will nourish our bodies and our minds. My mind and hands shape each piece with those intentions and as the pots move out into the world, my touch is extended to the person who takes that piece into their own home to use.
My pottery is made of porcelain clay and is fired in an electric and gas kiln to cone 10 (~2300F). I seek to infuse my work with a sense of movement; the soft stroke of the hand giving comfort and thanks through use. All pots are safe for microwave, dishwasher and oven.