Will Swanson - Host Potter
I fashion useful, stoneware pottery for the kitchen and table.
My intent is to make functional pots which will be enjoyed through the simple aesthetic pleasures of everyday use.
In all my pots, I want the character of the earth materials and the hand-making process to be evident.
The best of these should attain a satisfying simplicity while conveying the uniqueness of the handmade object.
41421 Ferry Rd (in Sunrise), Harris, MN 55032
Showroom open most days
will@willswanson.com
www.sunrisemnpottery.com
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Janel Jacobson - Host Potter
I currently enjoy using high fire porcelain clay with the intention of making pots that are useful in daily life. While doing this, I continue to pursue developing wheel-thrown forms that may be gently reshaped, carved, stenciled and slip-textured to be enhanced with celadon glazes, or to serve as a canvas for active, responsive carbon trapping glazes.
41421 Ferry Rd (in Sunrise), Harris, MN 55032
Showroom open most days
janel@janeljacobson.com
www.sunrisemnpottery.com
Visit Janel's webshop
Hayne Bayless, Ivoryton, CT
I love what spawns in the friction between what I want of the clay and what it would rather. The techniques of hand-building – extrusions and slab construction – let me take advantage of clay's power to capture gesture. The unintended result, often misread as a mistake and so dismissed, is one of the most fertile sources of new ideas. The trick is not to fool with clay's inherent desire to be expressive. It will offer – or impose – its own ideas about new forms and ways to work.
Karin Kraemer, Duluth, MN
The Duluth Pottery is my studio and gallery in the Lincoln Park Crafts District of Duluth, Minnesota. I started as a biologist and glass-blower in college and blew glass for a few years. I wandered into clay around 30 years ago. Now, I make Maiolica functional and decorative pottery and tile.
I draw inspiration from nature, my garden, and scenes around me. I love color, and painting with a loose, expressive brush. I try to capture the energy in that painting to bring beauty to the day and the table. The pots are red earthenware, thrown and built, and fired once. They are dipped in my maiolica base glaze. Stains are brushed on the raw glaze, and fired in an oxidation firing.
karin@duluthpottery.com
www.duluthpottery.com
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Becky Lloyd, Clyde, NC
My work uses a centuries old technique called sgraffito to create very intricate patterns and designs. Each piece of hand thrown porcelain is coated with a black terra sigillata slip. I then use a very sharp knife to cut into the slip to expose the white porcelain underneath. This technique allows me to indulge in my passion for design and challenge my skills at the same time.
Over the last several years my work has become more personal. A refuge. An expression of beauty, love and grief all at the same time. I have always had a keen interest in ancient civilizations and the incredible art they produced. Those ancient worlds hold endless inspiration for me and always will. But I am now looking inside myself. Searching. Searching for what I have lost. In late April of 2014, Steve my husband, partner in clay and life passed away unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart condition. This man that I spent over 26 years of my life with was everything to me. He was always my biggest fan but I now know he was also my biggest inspiration. A true artist. An amazing potter. Never have I worked in the studio without him by my side. The pots we made together were an expression of the love we had for each other and our work. I cannot help but reflect on what was. It has shaped my life to what it is. Moving forward is inevitable, but in looking back and remembering I am carrying along memories and ideas of all that we had together. Now I must look inside and find the courage and grace to continue what Steve and I started together so long ago. Steve will always be in every piece I make and every piece I decorate. How could it be any other way?
becky@lloydpottery.com
www.lloydpottery.com
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Romulus Craft
Ikuzi Teraki & Jeanne Bisson,
Washington, VT
Romulus Craft is about relationships. Relationships between two distinct individuals from two different cultures, between nature and time, between control and spontaneous reaction. Our tableware is all handcrafted from Teraki’s own porcelain recipe, slip-oxides stains and a glaze. Ikuzi Teraki, a native from Kyoto, Japan does the throwing, trimming and carving while Jeanne Bisson, a native from Vermont, does the hand building, pinch and slab work. Together we share the many other varied and numerous aspects of maintaining our studio with one goal: to continue.
Ellen Shankin, Floyd, VA
Every day I work at the wheel. Over and over again I focus my attention on the unruly clay and bring my mind and body together in an intention to center it and create forms filled with breath and energy. For more than 40 years I have found myself drawn to this effort, trying to make pots that possess strength and clarity. Throughout that time I have been able to wander along a path that regularly courses between inspiration and familiarity, passion and comfort.
Day in and day out, I make forms that please me, that honor the obsessions that have always driven my inquiries:
Line: how it moves around a piece, out of the rim and back into the body.
Balance: how pots feel in the hand when lifted or poured.
Tension: how clay moves in ways that speak of a vitality pushing at the seams.
Architecture: the organic structure of nature around me, particular feelings about color and light, and my sense of the relationship between form and use, play heavily in the instincts and decisions that go into making these pieces.
I am keenly aware that along with these pots I am creating the quality of my time. I am crafting a daily existence filled with meaning and reward. Along with pitchers and covered jars, I am constructing the very manner in which time passes. Hours go by immersed in threads of interest. I wander, I struggle, I sink into a landscape dominated by shape, volume, scale and texture and I watch the interaction of those elements unfold over and over again in an evolution of my work.
These feelings, which underpin my studio life, value the journey as well as the destination. This seems to be almost an anachronism today. But there it is. A truth I have lived and loved.
shankinwarstler@gmail.com
www.ellenshankin.com
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Mark Shapiro, Worthington, MA
Where will my pots end up? In the landfills with the busted bikes and lawnmowers and all the other cheaply made or quickly obsolete techno-junk—in the giant middens of our endless desires? No matter. I am glad to leave a record of my own touch in this most receptive, fragile, and enduring material.
Sam Taylor, Westhampton, MA
Some things I love about being a potter. I love clay, wet, leather hard, bone dry, and fired. I love making pottery on my super slow pottery wheel, hewing blocks of clay into the shape of dishes and other things. I love moving clay with the pad of my thumb and drawing on pots with a pencil. I love the depth of intrigue and mystery revealed in the fired clay over a lifetime of use.
Tara Wilson, Montana City, MT
Tara Wilson was captivated by clay as a high school student in Clyde, Ohio. During her undergraduate studies in Tennessee, she became fascinated with the wood firing process. Upon moving west for a residency at The Archie Bray Foundation her love for the rugged beauty of Montana’s diverse landscape was awakened–from the sweeping planes to the rugged mountains. These passions continue to drive her artistic endeavors today as she produces woodfired pottery in her studio near Helena, Montana. The soft forms of her woodfired vessels often relate to the figure while the surfaces are inspired by her natural surroundings.
trainkiln@gmail.com
www.tarawilsonpottery.com
Visit Tara's webshop