CLAY AND SCULPTURE
Noel Bailey
I am a potter. I am in love with the material and the process. My practice and ideas evolve through making.
My work is strongly influenced by the natural environment that I live and play in, with the various forms and processes associated with water composing a central, resounding theme. I am drawn to serene, fluid, and graceful forms, which I find abundant in vertical ice and water-carved rock. What fascinates me are the rhythms of freeze and flux, ebb and flow, erosion and deposition. My process engages these transformational cycles; the resulting dynamic surfaces convey a narrative of movement and change.
Laura Ceraso
Laura is a ceramic artist and art teacher. She creates her pottery at the Mud Studio in Middlesex, Vermont.
Cathy Clark
Jonathan Draudt
I have been making animal sculpture for over 30 years, mostly with the subtractive method using a chainsaw and carving white pine, but working in plasticine clay to make models for them. Now, I find working with terra cotta clay a better way to express my love and admiration for animals and a good medium for permanence. Realism is my aim but sometimes it’s fun to anthropomorphize them a little to make useful items or just to be whimsical. Bears are universally iconic and comprise most of my work but every creature is unique and worthy of attention and I enjoy making special orders for people.
I live and work in the backwoods of Warren, Vt near Blueberry Lake, surrounded by nature, and enjoy making music, carving, painting and rambling about.
Abby Dreyer
I design and hand build these one-of-a-kind birdhouses to be actual nesting boxes for various species of cavity nesting birds. The depth/width of the "house" as well as the diameter of the entrance hole is different for each type of bird. The stoneware clay that I use shrinks about 12.5% from start to finish so I have to scale all the measurements up to compensate for this. Every house has drainage, ventilation and opens easily for cleaning.
Jane Edwards
Kileh Friedman
I began working in clay in my late 20’s while living in Atlanta, GA. At that time, I was a cook in a coop vegetarian restaurant and a single mom of a 3-year-old son. I was looking for something creative to do with my time and found Callanwolde Arts Center, where a new program was being offered by the City Parks & Recreation. Rick Berman, fresh out of grad school in Athens, GA was hired to establish a ceramics program. I learned so much from Rick, who was an inspiring and a generous teacher. I immersed myself in throwing pots, mixing glazes, making clay, and had my first experience firing cone 10 reduction kilns. I even had a chance to build a raku kiln while working as an assistant in the clay studio at Callanwolde. It was a wonderful opportunity and grounding in the world of clay.
I continued pursuing my passion where finding my way in pottery became an adventure. Paulus Berenson had recently published his groundbreaking book, Finding One’s Way with Clay, and it revealed to me a new way to approach life’s mysteries through the medium of clay.
In 1974, I drove to Nevada with a friend and spent a month at Tuscarora Pottery School, run by Dennis Parks, who fired his kilns with scrap oil. We worked outside in a geodesics dome and had a grand old time living in an old western ghost town. This is when I became convinced--I wanted to be a potter.
In my earlier thirties I moved back to San Francisco and worked for 2 years at the Ruby O’Burke studios in Noe Valley. Ruby was a cantankerous 85-year-old woman who owned 3 dachshunds. She had founded a community studio on the lower floors of her home where there were probably 20 potters, all renting spaces and the use of her kilns. Ruby’s Studio still exists long after she parted and is now called “Ruby’s”.
I married in 1978 and moved with my puppeteer husband, my son, and his son to Plainfield, VT to be closer to The Bread & Puppet theater which my husband was part of. I opened my own studio in a rented building on a dirt road, which had a gas kiln that had been built there and passed on by a previous potter. There I found a rich community of craftspeople in central Vermont. I became part of a group that founded a cooperative craft gallery in Montpelier called the Artisan’s Hand, which is still thriving today! I sold my creations at craft fairs, galleries, and shops throughout Vermont.
Later in 1982 I became an art and pottery teacher at a local High School. It represented a turning point in my life because I realized how much I loved working with people rather than being alone working in clay.
This passion for working with people led me to my interest in psychology, and on to graduate school and a career as a therapist. I retired from my practice after 20 years as a psychotherapist in 2011.
Since then, I have been fully dedicated to making pots again. Today I work in a small studio in a shared space in the heart of the arts district in Burlington, Vermont firing my pieces in a Bailey reduction kiln and a raku kiln, I enjoy the feeling of being back to my roots. Speaking of roots, just two years ago I was able to reconnect with my mentor and inspiration, Rich Berman while passing through Atlanta. He was as handsome as ever and I got to buy one of his incredible raku pots before continuing on my way to St. Petersburg, where I spend my winters working at Clayworks, a community studio there.
David Hodgson
Ingrid Gitnick
I have been a student of the arts since art camp as a child. I attended the California College of Art and Design at Oakland, California. After my sophomore year I took a year abroad to apprentice as a glassblowing assistant at Tarrah Glass in Crete, Greece. When I returned to the United States I finished my art education at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. After graduating from college I moved to New Orleans and worked making Mardi Gras floats and as a decorative furniture and lighting finisher. After the turmoil of Hurricane Katrina, I decided to head north for the peace and beauty of the green mountains of Vermont. It was here that I found my passion in pottery. The pieces you see here were inspired by this landscape.
I find inspiration for my work in the natural beauty of Vermont. I enjoy making well crafted pottery for everyday use.
Deborah Goudreau
Emily Johnson
Leslie Koehler
"My creative inspiration comes from an interest in Mediterranean Pottery, the tiles of the Middle East and North Africa, and Japanese Ink Painting with its simple, yet elegant brushwork. Travel is a great inspiration for me and adds immensely to my designs and life as an artist."
Tessa Milnes
Patricia Occhipinti
Aidan Palmer
Elizabeth Saslaw
For as far back as I can remember, I wanted to earn a living as a seller of things I created with my own hands. I think it was pretty clear to me (not to mention my family and friends) that a 9 to 5 job in an office was not a direction I wanted to go.
The realization of this lifelong dream is something I'm truly grateful for. I went from being a young, slightly unfocused college art student who casually stumbled into pottery—to a committed potter in love with the feel of wet, slippery clay between my fingertips. The rhythmic process of slapping a lump of clay on the wheel and coaxing each piece into shape is still something that enthralls and challenges me, even 30-plus years later.
Bonnie Seideman
Artist Statement: My passion for pottery was born from my despair after the horrors of September 11, 2001. I was desperate to find something that would quiet my brain and quell my ever-mounting fears.
When my friends urged me to try working with clay, I was skeptical but willing to give myself over to anything that would help me be at peace. And that is just what I found with ceramics; work that allows me to be totally in the moment, that gives me great joy and profound peace. Work that makes my heart sing.
My current poppy collection, inspired by the burst of bright spring blooms along my country road, makes me smile, and I get extraordinary pleasure creating every piece! I hope you too will enjoy my work.
Bonnie Seideman was born in New York City in 1950. As a child, she excelled at coloring in the lines of coloring books, painting by numbers, and playing ‘house’ and ‘school.’ She and her husband Sam have lived in their Plainfield, Vermont home facing Camel’s Hump for nearly 45 years. They are the parents of two fine grown sons and grandparents to four sparkling grandchildren.
Leigh Stockton
Raised in Colchester, Vermont, I have lived in the Mad River Valley for 25 years. I spend my days teaching at the local elementary school, and come home to relax by playing with clay, creating functional art for the home. My pots are made of high-fired stoneware, safe for dishwasher, microwave, and oven unless otherwise noted. I gather inspiration from the natural beauty that surrounds me here in the northern Green Mountains of Vermont. The joy I experience while playing with mud is enhanced by the knowledge that someone will live with and love my work, both for its functionality and its beauty.
Aron Temkin
Slab construction, functional and decorative work. A mix of high fired stoneware wherein the patterning is primarily a product of the coloration in the clay body. Mugs and cups are glazed white inside and partially dipped in celadon outside. The larger polygonal vessels are intended as sculptural works but are glazed and fired to be functional vessels.
Abigail Tonks Pottery
Randolph potter Abigail Tonks has been throwing and glazing colorful pots since she was a teenager. Her work has evolved over the years and continues to change.
Mary Sweeney Pottery
I am a potter and recently moved to Stowe, VT from Maine. I’ve been making pots for over twenty years, teaching pottery, and volunteering in my local community. My passion is making functional pottery. Thoughtful forms that can be used every day in the home is where I begin. Then, the ideas about the surface decoration are where the nature around me come into play. Texture, carving, and color all compliment the forms. I fire my work in atmospheric kilns where the clay, slips, and glazes can come to life.
Janice Walrafen
Artist Janice Walrafen creates handmade decorative relief tile, murals, and sculptures from clay in her studio in East Montpelier, Vermont. Inspired by her love and connection to the diversity and beauty of nature, she creates handmade one-of–a-kind and multiple tile by carving into moist clay, creating a subtle relief image in the clay giving it a dimensional and textural quality.
Susan Warren
I enjoy everything about the clay process. I love shaping the piece on the wheel, trimming, and carving designs. My sgraffito is done mostly free hand and therefore each piece is one-of-a-kind. I enjoy the carving process for the boldness of the lines and the texture it creates in the finished piece. I had done pottery extensively in high school and college, and recently have returned to clay again at the Mud Studio in Middlesex. I worked for over 30 years as a lake biologist for the State of Vermont, where I honed these designs as doodles on the margins of meeting notes. I love the outdoors, and find much inspiration in nature for my designs.
Rachel Laundon
I am a freelance artist living and creating in Waterbury Center, VT. I believe that art is a process of discovery and I thrive on working in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, assemblage and collage.
Being from a long line of ladies who love to fish I became hooked on the sport as soon as I pulled my first bass out of Lake Champlain. Fish are sleek and lovely creature and their form lends itself to endless combinations of color, texture and pattern. I create my fish and dog sculptures using wood, copper, texture mediums, paint and found objects. Other inspirations for my work include Vermont's colorful people, music, animals and of course, pets.
Bette Ann Libby
Bette Ann is passionate about fostering the creative experience as a vehicle toward community connectivity and feels that installation art is essential to well-being.
Libby's images have been inspired by her teaching in Samoa and travels in Europe, Asia, India and the mid-east. Over the past 35 years, she has received numerous awards for her work, which has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the US.