Clay Mason Studio creates functional pottery that holds a mountain-inspired, Bohemian flair rooted in the clay history and glazes of her childhood home in Shenandoah Virginia. Amy specializes in custom logo wholesale mugs and local sales.Clay Mason StudioAmy Renee Hess
Facebook | Phone: 540-333-4289
Click on images to enlarge.
Jennifer Hill is a studio artist and freelance instructor in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Earning
a BFA and MFA in ceramics lead to teaching in colleges and art centers across the
country for over 20 years and exhibiting nationwide. Her work is greatly influenced
from living on Kauai for several years. Jennifer has since attended art residencies in
places as diverse as Rome, Italy and Missoula, Montana. This summer in Oregon she is
teaching workshops on building ceramic vessels informed by textures in nature.
Website | Email | Instagram | Phone: 214-399-6684
PIG PEN POTTERY
Pig Pen Pottery was established in what was once the farrowing shed inhabited by Jerry and Shirley Huft’s pet sow, Annabelle. Tiny piglets were soon replaced by pottery wheels, a kiln, and an entirely different type of clutter. When they moved to Grants Pass, Oregon, they happily created a new pleasant, practical studio space, but kept the name as a reminder of their roots.
Shirley began her career as a high school painting, drawing and pottery teacher. Jerry joined her in college pottery classes and soon discovered an affinity and love of clay. Between them, they make over 60 different types of functional pottery, working and building on each other’s ideas. Along with traditional platters, bowls, candlesticks, cups and a myriad of other functional pieces, they have added fish, bird and pig bowls in a wide range of sizes and colors.
Email: moc.loa@stopnepgip
Laughing Waters Pottery
Although making utilitarian pottery has been my consuming interest for fifty years, like many artists, I have worked in related fields to support my passion. For years I taught art and other subjects in public schools. After receiving a B.A and lifetime teaching credential from California State University in Sacramento, I have taught, lived and made pottery in California, Colorado, and Oregon. My major was art, with a large part of that study in art history. I added a Master’s degree in Education from Southern Oregon University in Ashland recently.
Laughing Waters Pottery in Grants Pass is my studio in a small room and garage. Pottery equipment (a pottery wheel, kilns, slab table, extruder, pug mill and lots of clay) has taken over the room, the garage and spread to the yard. It is quite a sight, much more interesting that the Better Homes and Gardens version of a beautiful yard. At least to a potter it is heavenly.
Ross, my husband, now makes his own pieces and smoke fires our big decorative platters, which is a primitive firing method he carries out in a barrel using just Oregon hard woods.
Also some of our new work is sculptural, both figurative and non representational. I love to find new areas of pottery and try them. Welding classes allowed for added metal in some of my sculptures.
In 1977 I made and sold quite a few $10 cups, financing a month’s trip into eight countries in Europe with high school students. There and in Washington DC I saw work that has continued to influence my designs. I continue to visit museums and collections whenever I can.
Outside my pottery business, I still tutor, working for local public school districts. I now enjoy working with students who do not prosper in the regular classrooms or have been excluded from regular classrooms. One-on-one, these students are just wonderful people who I genuinely love to teach and know.
I also attend regular meetings of pottery groups and workshops. I keep learning and practicing. I hope those efforts and my love of all pottery shows in my work.
Pumphouse Pottery
I think my work will always be about my love for story, whether it be the story of how the pot was made or the illustrative capturing of a moment in time — the way a magpie alights on a fence, the description of a flying fish in a 1902 nature book, the sharpness of a swallow’s wings against the sky as it dives.
My mother was a potter and art teacher, but although I grew up making art, I concentrated on the written word in school, eventually earning a PhD in literature and writing in 1994. That same year my mother died from cancer, leaving me her well-used wheel, kiln, and a series of mysterious glaze recipes. It took nearly ten years and several moves later to see what I had inherited. I found myself in southern Oregon, teaching literature but connecting with Clayfolk artists who showed me how to shape the fog of grief into the delight of working with clay. During those years, my studio was a 6X6 foot pumphouse where I worked every spare moment, making pots and competing with the pump and waterlines for space. My kiln was outside. As a result, I like to say that my apprenticeship in ceramics was literally affected by the rolling of the seasons and the events of the natural world around me.
The illustration-aspect of my work borrows heavily from books, particularly the fascination I have with woodcut and lithograph prints. I often incorporate words into my designs and layer engobes (colored slips) or underglazes. Each piece is hand carved from drawings or patterns of my own. Unless otherwise stated, my work is dishwasher, oven, and food-safe, although handwashing may be recommended in some cases.
If I say there is a story to everything, I am also thinking about the journey art takes as it passes from one person to another. And so I hope that the pieces I create travel on, telling new tales in the hearts and minds of others.
Psychoceramics
I love what fire can do to clay. And I love working with natural materials, especially wood ash. The drippy, runny effects, as well as the beading of some of the glazes on many of my pots come from wood ash, used as a flux to melt the glaze. (The trick is to make the glaze fluid—but keep it on the pot at 2230 degrees or more.) I often enhance effect with textured slip (a runny, wet clay) applied to the surface. All the pots you see here are made of white stoneware and fired in a gas kiln.
My studio is beside the North Umpqua River, near Roseburg, Oregon. Before becoming a potter, I was a psychologist, for nearly three decades, at Umpqua Community College—which explains the name of my pottery business: Psychoceramics.
Click on images to enlarge.
Kemper Clay
I have been creating in clay for over two decades. My explorations started with a beginning throwing class in Colorado, then to mixing clay and glazes at a community college in Kansas, to independent clay studies in Oregon, and finally to a beautiful studio in Ashland, Oregon. It amazes me how new ideas continue to flow into my head and hands. My signature pieces for many years were very thin hand-built porcelain vessels edged in 24k gold. My mother’s wooden rolling pin was often used to roll a lace texture into the porcelain. I love the balance of the delicate beauty and the inherent strength of these pieces.
Two years ago my worked changed dramatically. Our daughter turned 27 in intensive care after surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. Once I got back to my studio, whimsical shapes, thick clay, and primary colored glazes started to appear. My hands took over and created crazy, nonrealistic birds. These birds looked up at me with funny little beaks and funny little eyes – they made me smile. Our daughter continues her recovery and the birds continue to evolve. There are now clay birds sitting on rocks, birds in clay bird houses, birds in nests, and birds on clay window sills. The whimsy of these creations has helped balance the intensity of life.
Studio in Eugene: By appointment
Click on images to enlarge.
Click on images to enlarge
Clara Lanyi Ceramics
In my booth, you can find functional tableware meant for daily use, sculptural vase forms, and ceramic jewelry. I use vintage and custom ceramic decals to decorate my work which are fired on in a third firing. Images of scientific diagrams, mythological creatures, and sacred geometry are joined by floral graphics from many eras. The graphics are assembled across a surface of luscious homemade glazes. All my work is hand built or thrown in my home studio in Springfield, Oregon. Please see my website ClaraLanyi.com for more images and information about my process.
Contact information:
Website: http://www.ClaraLanyi.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/ClaraLanyiCeramics
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClaraLanyiCeramics
Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ClaraLanyiCeramics
