Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“I came to clay through Japanese Tea Ceremony. I was studying Chado and fell in love with the chawan, the iconic ceramic tea bowl used in the elaborate ceremony. For me, the bowl was the quintessential metaphor for the human vessel: perfect in its imperfec- tion; precious, yet ordinary; and containing the entire cosmos in its emptiness.
I set out to make my own tea bowls by asking the question “If we are containers for
the best and worst qualities of humanity, what would a bowl of compassion look like?” I realized it would take me the rest of my life to discover that…if at all.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“Some First Nations people consider clay the bodies of their ancestors. Some cultures look at the spirit of the taste of clay entering the soul of the maker. The nurturing of the community, all of the wonderful people, and the eco-mutual relationship to this earth
is what makes the work reflect the person making it. The joy is this human family using the pottery daily and preserving the memory of the maker in pottery long after he or she returns to the earth to become new clay deposits.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“My artistic career started before kindergarten, a few years after the end of WWII. I told my mother I wanted to make a book about the battle between good and evil (I still have this book). Evil was represented by a pirate ship with my preschool interpretation of the skull and crossbones drawn as an XX on the pirate boat flag. At around 4 years of age, I thought the overlapping “N” and “Y” letters of the New York Yankees baseball hats looked like a complicated and evil skull and crossbones (I hadn’t been taught the alphabet yet). The XX was my simplified version of it. I was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and the Yankees were the enemy.
At 8 years of age, I filled up a drawing book with images of the WWII Battle of Midway…””
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“Looking inward, one explores foundation and existence in an attempt to surface similari- ties as well as uniqueness. Therefore, we have to collect and find the smallest, the most basic particles, forming milestones in order to arrange and express our individuality.
I altered a technique of painting, covering and sealing with Terra Sigillata, used in ancient Greece. Natural samples of clay are mined in Israel and around the world, puri- fied and refined into tiny particles, creating Terra Sigillata. Applying this Terra Sigillata onto the sculptural work is followed by multiple oxidation firings while adding additional layers of Terra Sigillata in between. At the end, a final reduction firing in a gas/wood kiln exemplifies the colorfulness of the warm hues and creates the backdrop where imagery meets infinity.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“I come from a family of makers, people who found importance and pleasure in designing and making objects for others to use. They were manufacturers, but they also surrounded themselves with objects of beauty that added meaning to their lives. Many early memories are of my parents ‘arranging’ objects in our house, moving things from one place to another, organizing their possessions to highlight whatever aesthetic impulse of the moment required. I remember my mother, when asking me to set the dinner table, always adding ‘do it artistically!’ at the end of her request, a subversive moment within the banal activities of daily life to challenge a twelve year old to question what that might personally mean. In effect, she was asking me to find an aesthetic experience within the ritual of everyday life.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“Every person has the task from birth to learn what is genuine and real for them. There are points along the way where the issue comes more brightly into focus. While I have watched family and friends confront this issue, I think I can write best about this idea from my own personal experience.
The crisis came for me when I was in my 20’s. I had been pursuing my college science studies with a growing uncertainty about the future direction they were taking me. A class in a completely new and unlikely subject, pottery. It opened up the new worlds of craft and art: a path that seemed to have promising qualities, possibilities that were more authentic.
There was a real sense of excitement, a passion that happened quickly and surprisingly. How could I pursue this passion in a realistic way? I really had no idea from past experience.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“I find myself seduced by containers of all sorts. Perhaps because we ourselves are con- tainers – not only physically of our organs and the food we eat, but also of our thoughts and emotions, impressions of the world, the beauty we see. I use all that to make things out of clay.
In its essence, my Authentic Self is a vessel. It is a container for who I am: the charac- teristics I was born with, my beliefs about myself, the experiences I’ve had and literally, a holder of my children.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“My work started to become mine about 19 years ago, when I moved to Wisconsin and spent months and months working alone in my new studio. All the voices of my past teachers, all the critical training, learned rules and deep influences quieted down. The input of grad school sifted down and my own voice began to emerge. Repeating cycles of making and firing started new conversations and I had to rely on myself to critique the work, and then follow through on making the next generation. As a wood fire potter, it has also taken many years to shed the mantle of Japanese pottery.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“Within my journey as an artist the pursuit of functional ware that transcended time
has given way to the intoxicating revelry of the aesthetic drunk. The formal elements of functional ware and the systematic approach within the throwing process are still deeply cherished, however they are now backdrop for the overtly decorative. Centerpieces for the celebratory moments are made from re-purposed craft hobby molds that embel- lish surfaces or construct aspects of a vessel. Who knew that the repetition of a Santa’s beard used as a sprig to embellish could harbor such innate potential? From my studio… much laughter ensues.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
““Authentic Self” challenged me to be more honest with my work. In developing my line of ceramics, I have used animals as avatars for important people in my life, but I don’t often include myself in the stories told on the surface of my pots. Certain objects contain meaning for me, but I like to hide behind them – anonymous. For this show, I am fully present. Others come with me, but they are there to help guide me.
The materials I have chosen to work with assist my ideas. Using an underglaze pencil allows for a specific kind of line. It is soft and wavering and sometimes in the heat of the kiln it will fade out. Its tenuousness is like the uncertainties and memories in life and so much more delicious when grasped – like a word you just can’t quite remember, then it bursts into your mind! Underglaze washes work for matte color and delineation of forms, because life isn’t shiny except for in bursts. And it’s really in the differences between matte and shiny that excitement lives.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“The fascination I have with the figure is rooted in my drawing background. For all of my adult life I have relied on daily drawing as an act of contemplation and meditation. As a student, I was drawn to the expressiveness of the human figure. The rendering of the human figure offers endless possibilities for expression of what it means to be truly human, truly alive. Over the many years the figure has been a reoccurring element in all my work. When I was introduced to clay, I felt challenged by a third dimension that par- ticularly excited me. As I explored tri-dimensionality further, I became more involved in expressing the emotional element of being human, rather than concentrating on life-like representation. I was influenced, too, by historical and contemporary ceramic work. Staf- fordshire figures, erotica, Chinese and Japanese brush drawings, depictions of nature, as well as the human condition, appear often in my work.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“I realized at an early age there are shades of morality; my path to clarity for a moral compass is a life’s endeavor, not only because circumstances of similar situations at different times in one’s life inevitably change, but because people change as they make new friends, acquaintances, coworkers and live life. To be true to one’s personal beliefs, a person has to first figure out those beliefs, which for most of us are fluid and change over time, if ever so slightly, because as we experience life we continuously contemplate and evaluate our reactions. We make decisions based on all of our life experiences and as we get older, we have more experiences from which to formulate our decisions. As I continue to learn how to recognize situations where non-rational, emotional responses would be harmful to those on the receiving end and learn how to give myself the time to contemplate, react to and evaluate new ideas and situations, automatically my authentic self is more comprehensible to me, and my moral foundation and convictions become stronger and more stable.”
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To view Kimberlee’s work offered for purchase click here.

Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“Why an artist begins a series is sometimes incidental. I started using porcelain, and focused
on a simple closed boat form, rather than a complex construction. It is angled to suggest po- tential movement as a boat would have in water but hangs vertically on a wall. The series “Lost on Land” suggests a sense of displacement, isolation, as well as longing. The surfaces became the “land” reference. The boat form could have its history recorded as its surface, map-like drawings of passages, places, and meanderings. Black and white photographs of land inspired the surfaces I created, aerial views taken by a surveyor. I found the river paths and agricultural patterns fascinating, as the shapes created were sometimes odd and awkward as they obviously followed the lay of the land. But I loved how they worked together beautifully. My drawings are invented as I draw across the surfaces. There is no reference to any particular place or desti- nation. I thought of them marking or scarring the land in search of water. Other marks on the surfaces were made to create a sense of movement like wind or shadows of objects passing over the land, and could also be interpreted as time passing, or thoughts or dreams.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“I made pots, lots of them, none that were particularly good or personal, but good enough to allow me entrance into some good graduate programs. I think the best work I made was after Don Reitz had visited Oswego to conduct a workshop. He did things with clay I didn’t think were possible i.e., dropping pots on the floor, cutting them up and reassembling them, adding/subtracting, working intuitively, etc. I proceeded to adjust the work but it wasn’t my voice, although it did help to build a portfolio for my graduate school application. So, I headed off to Michigan where I was told, “we don’t make pots at Michigan.” I proceeded to make sculpture, hard edged, architecturally inspired work that drew upon my urban upbringing in NY, but I really had no personal stake in the work other than its aesthetic proximity to the visual pleasures I’d had while growing up: monuments, sky- scrapers, bridges, tunnels… I still love those forms.”
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To view Roy’s work offered for purchase click here.

Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“I learned the value of creativity by watching people work and focus their attention and en- ergy both individually and as a group. The quality of their being changed as they centered the spirit of themselves and became one with their work.
Observing the human face since early childhood has made me aware of the powerful energy of one’s being. What I try to capture in my work is the transcendent nature of full concentration and focus. Ordinary work can project a person into a meditative state and transform them into the work itself. It is a beautiful thing to behold.”
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Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
““I just make cups” is the only statement I am comfortable making about my work.
The gap between what I thought I was doing and what I did was vast and painful, in the Marine Corps. I joined with a desire to serve and I still have that desire. I don’t think any- thing I do will change the world, and nothing in the world releases me from my obligation to try. Making cups feels like a pretty impotent gesture, in the face of all of the horrors surrounding us. Peace is the only adequate war memorial. Any other “memorial” is at best a failure and usually a lie, promoting war as a good and noble thing. War is not a good thing. I still love the Marine Corps and Marines, which makes it harder to watch young Marines kill and die. Wars never end—they ripple and echo forever.”
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To view Ehren’s work offered for purchase click here.

Excerpt from artist’s exhibition statement:
“The pursuit of my authentic self has been a prolonged one for me. I’m a late bloomer in the art world, and have had little formal training beyond a few drawing and clay throwing classes. I never considered myself a ‘real artist’, although I’d always loved making things with my hands. It was a slow process for me to realize that many of the things I’d been creating in clay, although competent, were attempts to appeal to what I thought other people would want; I wasn’t trusting myself and my own ideas.”
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To view Rebecca’s work offered for purchase click here.