Anina Major (she/her) is a visual artist from the Bahamas. Her decision to establish a home contrary to the location in which she was born and raised motivates her to investigate the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia, and identity. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including the Armory Show 2024 Pommery Prize, the 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, and the EKWC, Centre-of-excellence for ceramics international artist-in-residency. Major’s work has been exhibited in The Bahamas, Europe and across the United States, with a permanent display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Her work is included in permanent collections of the National Gallery of The Bahamas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Museum and Perez Art Museum of Miami, among others. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times, Forbes magazine and published in Phaidon Press Great Women Sculptors.

My work incorporates environmental themes that illustrate the fragility, power, and impermanence of the natural world. Referencing scientific imagery, data, and my personal experiences, I interpret the forces of nature through ceramic sculpture and wall installations. The medium of ceramics is a way to preserve information through the forming and firing process. I consider firing clay as an act of fossilization, creating a permanent record, perhaps an artifact or a memorial, of the ephemeral and the ethereal. Through these artifacts, I explore how we experience and relate to our environment and the climate crisis. By working at the intersection of art, design, craft, history, technology, and environmentalism, I hope that my work reflects the present, is an homage to our past, and expresses optimism for our future.

In the last two decades I have explored two main research streams one that focuses on political and visual rhetoric and the second on foodways, clay and identity. I believe that pottery forms are vehicles for conceptual communication and that we are all connected by craft history and theory.

The body work which I broadly refer to as the Political Rhetoric/Politics of Porcelain series evolved out of my research into Sévres porcelain used by Louis IX and Marie Antoinette and their use of porcelain as political currency across Europe in the 18th century and 19th century Hungarian textile patterns that were often disregarded as a handicraft, lacking sophistication. Through symbolism and ornamentation, I have worked to translate these patterns into visual rhetoric representing what I perceived to be pretentious, insincere and intellectually vacuous language we hear daily from contemporary politicians and the news media into visual rhetoric through the repetitive process of wheel throwing, altering, carving and applying pattern over plates and vase forms. The intensive process itself is a metaphor for our collective obsession with politics and our inability to really make change.

My second and somewhat new research stream explores foodways, clay and identity in collaboration with several world-renowned chefs. This body of work thinks through taste and place and the cultural significance of food, ingredients and the history of cooking in and with clay as they speak to contemporary identities. Together with my collaborators, we have through conversation and hands-on experimentation, studied ancient techniques of cooking in and with clay while attempting to develop contemporary relationships between hearth and earth. Beyond plating, we are exploring the transformation of food by the clay it is cooked in and vice versa with particular attention paid to the identities of place and taste through the sourcing of recipes, ingredients, techniques and clay.

If the distance between China and North America is 7723 km, then what is the distance between the previous me and the current me? If there are 12 hours between home and here, what time is it now? When a new life meets an old one, that moment draws me close. Tasting newness and oldness at the same time, I become the distance and difference; I am there, here, then, now.

I explore nature, identity, sense of place, and cultural displacement. Comparing and utilizing the elements and values from the East and the West, I trace my past, find my position. Living and moving among cultures, histories, languages, and assumptions always brings more – a question or an answer?

I hand-build my sculptures part by part without a blueprint and assemble them together to achieve an unknown structure. My work is comprised of multiple layers of ceramic materials and possibilities, suspended and fired on stilts, flowing down and pooling naturally in response to the topography and gravity. During this experimental and highly unpredictable process of making, firing, and installing, the position of my work has shifted and changed, becoming a new work of art. The scene of my work now looks ambiguous – it is neither the picture of my hometown nor the view of any specific location. It is something extracted from a recollection of experience and imagination; it comes from a person who appreciates the past and embraces the possibilities of the future.

I am a maker of clay objects who is shaping it and imbuing them with my passion and desire to make the medium sing. I have been involved with clay full time since 1975, making, teaching, writing, and operating my studio. My work derives from a tradition of functional vessels. My choice of shapes and the wheel-throwing methods I use comes from the concept that pottery forms have a volume and are formed from the inside out and the bottom up with the interior negative space defining the outward appearance.

Surfaces define the shape with textures that expand and grow during the forming process. The surface of my pots are a skin that defines and communicates what lies beneath. I’m influenced by my observation of the visual images and tactile objects around me: rock faces, landscapes, tree bark, raw earth; the colors of sand, sky, oceans, sunsets; the patina of copper; lava rocks, worn concrete sidewalks, the green mold that grows on shingles and fence posts; grass, moss, coral, man-made surfaces and more.

I am inspired by the connection that my son and I had through our common bond of this earth bound, plastic, expressive material that is underfoot and that so many people take for granted. I am inspired by the ability to speak through the language of clay that Jared and I naturally and fluently shared with each other.

I work and teach from my studio in Needham, Massachusetts and I teach at Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts. I have been blessed to have my work as a clay artist, teacher, and writer, known internationally. I have written five widely distributed books on Raku and the business of clay. My work has been exhibited widely in museums, galleries, and public spaces. It resides in many public and private collections, museums, corporations in the US and internationally.

I speak the language of clay and Raku is my dialect.

I make work that continues to acknowledge the legacy of Ghanaian ceramics history and contemporary presence without restriction, and often utilizes complex cultural symbols, such as those associated with Kente, the meanings of which are specific, layered, and nuanced. In employing these symbols in a ceramic context and infiltrating boundaries between traditional media, I make an imminently contemporary statement and exemplify an approach to my work which transcends form and questions the relationship between tradition and modernity, cultural exchange, and tension.

My work represents the current entanglement of human cognition and digital processing. The recent proliferation of the camera‐phone enables us to record spontaneously. Experience is interrupted to capture and store moments. The recordings are used for recollection; however, over time our reliance on the two‐dimensional image to replace perceptual experience flattens and fragments the memory. By dissecting and altering these fragments, my work raises awareness of a continually altered state of visual consciousness. It makes reference to a shift in contemporary experience relating to the cognitive processing of sight.

Hostler Burrows is a design gallery founded in 1998 by Juliet Burrows and Kim Hostler. Initially dedicated solely to Nordic design and decorative arts, the gallery has expanded its program and now integrates a full roster of contemporary artists, both established and emerging, with historical works. While international in scope, the gallery’s primary focus remains in Scandinavia and is rooted in the tradition of studio ceramics, particularly work by female artists.

The gallery is devoted to exhibiting work imbued with the qualities from which it has drawn inspiration since its beginnings – craftsmanship, intention, and integrity.

Hostler Burrows’ unique vision and deep understanding of the sublime design which emerged from Scandinavia in the 20th Century carry over and inform the contemporary work which is brought to market with passion and a critical eye.

Hostler Burrows’ carefully curated spaces, both in the gallery and at the world’s leading fairs, have placed them at the forefront of the design market and introduced an international clientele to a new generation of important artists whose works, while often cutting edge, maintain a strong continuity with the past.

Ben Owen III is an American potter born and raised in Seagrove, NC who uses wood firing and other techniques for making functional and decorative pottery. A sixth generation potter learning from his family, BFA in Ceramics at East Carolina University, Fellowship in Japan, and visiting artist in Jingdezhen, China. His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, The International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe, NM, The Schein-Joseph Inter-national Museum of Art in Alfred, NY, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, and Mint Museum of Craft, Charlotte, NC.

The mission of Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts is to provide artists time and space to explore ideas with clay in a community environment. Our rural setting – 54 acres in mid-coast Maine surrounded by farms and forests – is a source of inspiration for artists. Watershed’s residencies, workshops, educational initiatives, kiln facilities, artist talks and public events, serve the local, national and international clay communities.
Founded in 1986, Watershed’s internationally recognized residency model prioritizes the development of creative community. Nestled in a coastal Maine valley, the Watershed campus provides artists with time and space free from obligations and distractions. In the summer and fall, small groups of artists from across the US and abroad come to the Center for two to four-week sessions. Artists work alongside one another in an open-concept studio, collaborate on kiln firings, share meals, and forge lasting personal and professional connections. Many artists work with indigenous marine clay, a vestige of Watershed’s origins as a brick-making factory.

Each residency is anchored by a group of four to eight artists who develop a session theme a year in advance. Up to twelve additional artists then join the group, drawn by an interest in the work of the anchoring artists and/or the session theme. Residency themes include a wide range of technical, critical, cultural, and ideological focuses.
Annually, over 2,000 adults and youth are impacted by Watershed’s community programs. Guest artist workshops bring contemporary leaders in ceramics to Maine for hands-on learning experiences. For young and aspiring artists, Watershed’s educational program connects teaching artists with schools and community centers and offers popular professional development workshops for K-12 art educators.
Watershed’s extensive atmospheric wood and gas kiln facilities consistently draw artists from the region. Potters and artists from the Northeast regularly trek to Watershed to fire kilns not available elsewhere.
In Maine and around the country, Watershed showcases the work of ceramic masters and emerging artists through exhibitions and presentations. Watershed’s gallery features work by artists produced during or inspired by their Watershed experiences. The gallery is located in a stunning renovated Victorian home that also provides a space for year-round artist talks and community events.

Steve Hilton earned his MFA at Arizona State University (2005). He also holds degrees in Art Education and Geology from Missouri State University. His work has been collected by museums, universities and individuals both nationally and internationally. He has been curated and juried into international and national exhibitions in conjunction with curated solo exhibitions in the USA. Steve the Fain Professor of Fine Art in Ceramics at MSU Texas in Texas and is the current President Elect for NCECA, a Fellow of the Council of NCECA and a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC).

Phyllis Kudder Sullivan’s interlaced sculptures bring an over and under system associated with weaving of textiles into the third dimension; from a focus on two dimensional patters and textures of surface into the realm of structure. In her net like structures Sullivan embraces the Japanese concept of Ma, a philosophy maintaining that absences are jest as powerful as presences. The open grid of her « woven » clay coils blurs the distinction between interior and exterior, making the negative space in and through the work an essential element of the sculpture. The unfilled space between the coils allows visual access to the interior, invites the viewer to engage with the inner space and, for those who take the time, provides a deeper appreciation for the power of stillness. Her work is multi-referential with connections to nature, architecture, animal structures and fractal geometry.

In 2019 Sullivan retired as a Full Professor from Long Island University, New York, where she received her M.F.A. with mentor and Bauhaus artist, Rose Krebs.

Currently, I am the Coordinator for the TIPPETTS AND ECCLES GALLERIES at the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University, in Logan Utah, USA. I enjoy organising and facilitating exhibition installations, as well as working with artists and helping them realise their vision. This position also entails teaching art classes at the foundational level. I find the act of teaching and the process of learning to be inseparable.

One advantage of my position is that I have the flexibility to continue my creative research and work at the ceramics facilities in USU campus. The ceramics program is full of experienced professors and enthusiastic graduate students.

My training in art began in 1996 at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India. I dived into learning pottery in 2002 with Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith at GOLDEN BRIDGE POTTERY in Pondicherry. I worked at GBP in different capacities for a decade. In 2013, I set up my own studio, EARTH ART and I worked hand in hand with my family’s architectural design firm, OVOID, for several years, and through this connection I served as a landscape curator for a community housing in Auroville, India.

My work is inspired by geometry in nature. The geometric forms that are ubiquitous throughout nature hold a kind of sacred space in my consciousness as I strive to integrate them into my physical work. I search for the elemental in life; the foundation on which life exists.

I also search to find connection between the macro and the micro. Hence, I investigate the interdependence of my inner core and the limitless expanse of my physical, outer world.

I love connecting to other artists, and hope to act as a bridge for as many members of my artistic community as I can, fostering togetherness, collaboration, and exchange.

Jo Lauria serves on the Board of Directors of The Marks Project. Ms. Lauria is an award winning author, curator and educator with a demonstrated history of working within the structures of museums, universities, and publishing. Lauria served as an art history consultant to the inaugural PBS episode of Craft in America, and continued working with Craft in America in the role as chief curator. Lauria is a contributing writer to Ornament Magazine, Mentor Faculty of Otis College of Art and Design, and Adjunct Curator of the American Museum of Ceramic Art. Lauria’s lifelong goal is to become knowledgable of the work of international ceramic artists to ultimately curate an exhibition that surveys global ceramic history and trends.

Writing about ceramics has been my focus for over twenty years. As a curator, educator, lecturer, and author based in Northern California, US, I have championed the artistic diversity of ceramics as expressed through pottery, sculpture, architecture, and installation. While located on the far West Coast of the vast United States, California fosters a unique perspective that integrates the cultures of people who have come to its shores. This multiculturalism, combined with the impact of the region’s grand nature, creates an openness to ideas and practices that welcomes artistic growth.

Artistically diverse with an influx of aesthetic perspectives from Asia, Spain, and Great Britain, Northern California redefined creative clay use in the 20th century. This compelling story has broadened my purview regarding ceramic creativity as utilitarian and as fine art. Consequently, my inquiry expanded to the Republic of Korea, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. Ceramics on the West Coast of the United States in California has inspired many around the world. I am so pleased to be a part of a global ceramics community within the context of the International Academy of Ceramics.

The industrial production of objects has moved from using analog tools to computer-generated output void of the hand. My work explores how we can introduce the human hand into computer-controlled environments.

I produce blue-and-white porcelain objects using cobalt as a pigment, drawing parallels with both historic craft with a loaded history of globalization via the silk road as well as a material that is used in the electronics industry (cobalt is used for lithium-ion batteries). As an Asian American I hope to continue the tradition of blue-and-white, however put a digital spin on such a respected medium. I find it imperative to find innovative ways to create ceramics as to not let the tradition and knowledge die; it is with both understanding of old techniques as well as a willingness to innovate that lets culture thrive.

The content of my work ranges from selfies to poetic text messages as I believe that a text is a 21st Century love letter. I am interested in the screen-based technology being both a two-dimensional and three-dimensional object at the same time – much like a ceramic tile.

Diana Farfán, originally from Bogota, Colombia, is an award-winning ceramic sculptor, instructor, cultural agent, and art coach dedicated to advancing Latino artists in South Carolina. She is an instrumental leader mentoring young Latino artists and working to make their voices louder and more assertive in South Carolina, USA.

Diana is also an advocate for animal welfare and the natural environment. She supports local organizations by increasing Humane Education (HE) awareness, emphasizing sensitizing the youth through the arts.

Diana has a B.A. in Graphic Design, a B.F.A. in Ceramics and Printmaking from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and an M.F.A. in Ceramic Sculpture from the University of South Carolina. She has also studied as an exchange student at the University of Anchorage (Alaska, U.S.A.) and the Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan. She has been an artist in residency and exhibited at various art venues.

Through her figurative sculpture, Diana creates dramatic-poetic narratives coated with humor. Her work explores environmental, social, and political issues uniquely and compellingly.

Through my work I attempt to deal with psychological issues and examine emotions and feelings in depth. We as humans are subjected to inevitable changes during our lives. Physical transformations are obvious and foreseeable, but I am interested in studying psychological triggers that are responsible for human behavior and reactions. What are we afraid of, what do we love and hate; how do we interact with others?
I create a narrative by combining a three-dimensional form with a painterly surface. An abstract figurative shape becomes a base, an armature for my story. It is like the paper that a book is made from, and my paintings are the printed words. One doesn’t make sense without the other.
In my creative process I explore the integration between sculptural form and the painterly surface treatment. My sculptures convey the inner-world of a person – a world remembered or imagined from the past; a world of a dream, or a nightmare; a world of unfulfilled expectations.
Before jumping into the creation of an actual work, I research the subject and make sketches to get a general idea how the work will look, but so often the idea develops itself and takes over. I like to let it go and follow the creative flow. All of my work is hand-built and hand-painted with underglazes.

Holly Hanessian’s artwork addresses and engage participants and communities with art projects focusing on environmental and food justice issues through a socially engaged art practice. Recent works include creating a Hurricane Emergency Art Kit that promotes changes in water policy while also including artworks that calm participants to community-based projects that focus on food justice. She has written reviews on exhibitions, essays on Ceramics and Technology and has been included in the book, “The Ceramics Reader” published by Bloomsbury in England. She is a member of the Socially Engaged Craft Collective, artaxis.org. and the International Academy of Ceramics.

As an artist who has lived most of her life in India, where I studied ceramics with Ray Meeker in Pondicherry, I’ve come by curious and perhaps fateful circumstance to make my home in California. Even my journey into ceramics was unusual since my academic background is in literature and my first professional career was in classical dance. My journey as an artist has been a vigorous interrogation in search of form.

I transitioned from dance to ceramic sculpture with an abiding sense of an engagement with form as motion. In the large-scale ceramic work I’m building, the body of the human viewer is almost necessarily participatory in negotiating an encounter with the art, and both the sculptural and the human body, as they modulate exterior and interior horizons, emphasize, I hope, their mutuality, their simultaneity and involvement in each other.

I want my sculptures to invite viewers to walk around them, to interact with the revealed and the hidden. I’m passionate about form—mass, volume, material—in movement, tectonic aesthetics. I find it poignant that even in transformation, as clay turns to stone, the process of making—a fingertip depression, scrape, or dent—remains legible.

Since 2015, I have been a proud immigrant and, based on artistic merit, a citizen of the United States. Nevertheless, my concerns with my art remain distinctively international; I mean that my own identity is connected to an identification with others. If I speak several languages, if I can call on resources in multinational literature, dance, and artistic trajectories, perhaps I can use my particular experience in my ceramic work to break down some of the borders that keep feeling, empathy, and even beauty bound. If art, among the other things it does, teaches people to reinterpret known information about common experiences and the language used to describe it, I think that an immigrant like me, with an appetite for scholarship, literature, translation, dance, and ceramics, for instance, might bring to my immediate community fresh ways of seeing links and intuiting connections between the physical, intellectual, and the felt worlds.

From the tactile magic of malleable clay, to the visual temptation of luminous, fused silica in translucent porcelain, ceramic materials excite my senses.
Specific inspiration for my work follows a journey through the annals of ceramic art history. An early encounter with the “eggshell” wares of Asia encouraged me to test the limits of both myself and my materials. The Momoyama and Muromachi Periods in Japan, with their integration of chance occurrence as part of the creative process, led me to an acceptance of the physical limits of clay. This also opened the door to the sophisticated celebration, through Kintsugi repair practice, of an understanding that those limits are the nexus of a personal pursuit of perfection and porcelain’s eventual submission to the molecular strain of extreme temperature.
This “journey” is rounded out by a persistent fascination with the intricately patterned porcelains produced throughout the finest factories and studios of Europe and Asia. Who can visit the accomplishments of Meissen, Limoges, the Imperial Porcelains of Russia or the Imari Period in Japan and not be compelled to pattern?
Pattern, color and light have propelled personal, creative urges throughout my career and provide every indication of a continued quest.

I am a ceramic artist and have been teaching ceramic art at local art centers since 1973 and also have been traveling around the world. I am the international ambassador for ACGA (Association of Clay & Glass Artists) and enjoy being the liaison between the international ceramic community.

I draw inspiration from nature and also travel that gives me exposure to many different ceramic cultures. My work nurtures the idea that ceramic vessels and serving pieces should be « filled with flowers and food » and be used in our everyday life. I hope to contribute some beauty to the world through my artwork and inspiring my students; I hope to contribute my friendships for peace around the world.

Barbara Brown is a studio potter whose home and studio are in Sunnyvale, California. She studied with various master potters and attended Foothill College and University of California, Santa Cruz. She was awarded her lifetime teaching credential in 1984. She’s been invited and participated in ceramic symposiums in China, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Norway and Netherlands.

Her ceramic work is featured in several ceramic books: Ceramic Extruding, Functional Ceramics, The Extruder Book and 21st Century Ceramics.

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. The result is art that is both pleasing and alive.

The tactile feel and visual look of surface textures are essential to my pieces. I create textures by deeply impressing patterns into thrown cylinders. Then, working from the inside only, I expand the cylinder to create the final form. This technique allows the pattern to evolve as the clay twists and expands. As the pattern adjusts to the shape and function of the vessel, it becomes reflective of nature’s adaptation to form.

My glazing process enhances the natural aesthetic of order and randomness. Thinly glazed surfaces highlight the macropatterns and reveal the stoneware clay’s micro-texture created during the expansion process. I use multiple glazes to intensify the dynamic tension in these surfaces. Although functional, my work is above all decorative. The work is intended to intrigue the eye and demands to be touched.

I am a practicing artist, exhibiting ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, hot glass, and mixed-media installation art nationally and internationally for over seven decades. My artwork is included in major museums, public and private collections in Spain, Mexico, Italy, England, Sweden, Japan and the USA. Although I am known mainly for ceramics and ceramic installations, I have won significant awards in drawing, painting and printmaking. I draw, paint and work with clay by hand and on the potter’s wheel. I make 2-dimensional art, both figurative and abstract, as well as 3-Dimensional art composed of sculptures and installations that are conceptual, yet may include trompe l’oeil ceramic objects. I might combine collage and mixed media in my 2-dimensional art to create images, as well as text images. In addition, I have used decals made from my drawings of text that I have kiln-fired onto 3-dimensional objects. The ceramic process lends itself to multiples and variations on a form, which I take advantage of as a ceramist. As a ceramic designer, I have developed tile murals for architects and designers with multiple sizes, some with five variations from which to select to compose a mural, plus ceramic lamp bases and hanging lamps that have been put into production. My personal artworks, sculptures and ceramic mixed-media installations serve as vehicles for exploring deeper levels of meaning that the viewer may approach from his or her perspective, level and understanding. I develop ceramic objects, sculptures and ceramic mixed-media installations to tell stories and present my vision. Overall, I am interested in evoking associations of places and their cultural manifestations that I have come across through research, archaeology and world travel, as well as allude to human foibles, human mortality, the cyclical nature of life and death, and universal shortcomings, natural and man-made.

I try to avoid using machines in my creative process as much as possible. Instead, I prefer to use my hands, simple tools, and locally sourced clays and materials. I also use wood firing methods, which are sustainable and renewable in my area.

After completing my graduate program at Okayama University in 1996, I moved to Shigaraki, one of Japan’s oldest pottery towns, to further develop my skills as a potter. In 2001, I was fortunate to receive a scholarship from Rotary International to study at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in the USA.

Currently, I live in Seagrove, North Carolina, which is the largest pottery community in the USA. My husband, Takuro Shibata and I have built two wood kilns together – an Anagama with an additional chamber kiln and a small wood kiln – where I create my work.

I have led ceramic workshops, participated in lectures and panel discussions at ceramic conferences, and talked about the unique qualities of local « wild » clays in comparison to heavily processed clays. Clay has an elemental cultural and historical significance, and I am eager to learn more interesting clay stories from all over the world.

My journey from Japan to the USA has led me to explore a fusion of ceramic art between different cultures that I have experienced and appreciated throughout my life. My goal is to continue creating my work using natural materials, connect with more national and international ceramic communities, and meet new clay friends here and there.

I have always been interested in pushing the envelope of what ceramic work can be. I approach this with a sense of playfulness. I am the artist behind “Yellow Clay” production. Yellow Clay produces “ceramation” which is a stop-motion animation that specifically showcases ceramic-making processes and objects. The latest work, « Searching for Blue » was made to support Ukraine. « Invisible Structure » is a story about Asian American experience through the lens of the artist. Asian hate was on the rise during the pandemic. This made me reconsider my identity as a ceramic artist but most importantly an Asian American, and how I am placed in this complex history.

Artist Statement

“Mother and Child”

Mother and Child honors a journey of time, connection and bond, from traditional to contemporary, from realistic emotional expression to abstract presentation, from East to West.

Mother and Child represents movement, energy, love, relation, honesty, and integrity. Feelings toward my mother and her devastating illness mesh into one. It illustrates the reshaping of emotional and psychological connections into a physical assertion that redefines modernism and its visual language, using material in an interdisciplinary way.

Mother and Child is universal in scope. More importantly, it represents values instilled and influenced by notions of matrilineal family education which urges oneself to lead a purposeful and meaningful life and to defy and overcome impossible possibilities. Strengthened by women’s beliefs and a maternal drive to allow inspiration, love and persistence to slip into our lives, it redefines and refines our individual role in society. It also demonstrates how changing circumstances and moving forward to a wider field for gender’s voice and family education within our society and around the globe, shape of our social and artistic values.

Mother and Child not only challenges our understanding about contemporary, post-modernism and what is “current”, as well as, our boundaries and connections within a multi-layered and complex emerging aesthetic that stimulates and awakens our cultural consciousness to the essence of feminism within the rich history of gender roles, but also shifts our notion of modernity and aesthetic modernism toward examining its physicality. Its artistic expression interconnects process and vision, aesthetics and concept, and language of expression to the material – clay. It redefines “ceramics” and its old traditions, offering insight into contemporary, revolutionary, culturally and progressive stages of modern and post-modern perspectives, as well as, reinforces our sense of adaptability, vital to the essence of humanity.

I make a variety of ceramic objects that celebrate both form and surface. I am not bound by any constraint in method or material, nor am I bound by any strict adherence to utility.

I use use many ways to create work; either assisted in some way by a method or procedure such as slip casting or pressing, or unassisted, using throwing or hand building. Often times, my ceramic work utilizes a combination. I have a very deep vocabulary of techniques that allow my imagination to run unbound by preconception or historical imperative. The possibilities for creative endeavor are truly unlimited.

Major influences upon my work are architecture and geometry. The majority of my ceramics can be viewed as vessel centric and all deal with ideas associated with containment. Strict utility or function may only be a reference derived from a specific shape or form. Sometimes I also integrate industrial parts and fittings to create a visual dialog between work that evidences the handmade and manufactured parts.

I have made a diverse body of work for most of my career. I am driven to make objects that are both highly designed and impeccably crafted. I look in awe at the symmetries of culture and am humbled by what remains as historical evidence in ceramics. With an acknowledgment of that deep history of ceramics, I endeavor to make choices in my work that will continue to engage and interest me as well as others. I am honored to be a part of this continuum. I constantly reinvent my work by challenging myself. My studio practice has evolved over many years and it is important to always include others with me on this journey.