Studio Tour Profile

Art Of The Pot 2005
Guest Artist Information

Christa Assad, Peter Beasecker, Dee Buck,Michael Corney, Susan Filley, Jason Hess,Jenny Lind, Liz Lurie, Leanne McClurg, Billy Ray Mangham,Allan Walter (Rainbow Gate)

(Click the Artist's Name Above to Jump Directly to Their Information)

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Dee Buck
1296 Gruene Rd.
New Braunfels, TX 78130-3004
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phone (830) 629-7975
buckpottery@yahoo.com

Dee was first introduced to clay in 1974 while earning a BFA in art education at the University of North Texas. After a year of experimenting with pottery making, he enrolled at Texas Woman’s University, earning a MA in ceramics in 1980. He then became the resident potter for two years at the historic Old City Park in Dallas. In 1982, Dee and his family began searching the Texas Hill Country for a suitable location to start a pottery. They settled in Gruene, Texas (a historic district of New Braunfels). The foundation for the 100 cu. ft. wood-fueled kiln was poured in November 1982. Dee maintains his studio and retail gallery in Historic Gruene which is now the anchor point for the Texas Clay Festival.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Through my work I am attempting to preserve the art and craft of the potter. My pottery forms are designed to fit the intended function of the piece. I intentionally create a surface that will be enhanced by the wood and soda ash deposits during the long firing process, giving the work a subtle, understated beauty. I view my work as aesthetically complete only when it is put to use in one’s home and becomes a part of the daily cycle of living.

Dee will be showing with Rebecca Roberts

Jenny Lind and Allan Walter
Rainbow Gate
310 Johnson St.
Santa Fe, NM 87501
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phone (505) 983-8892
fax (505) 984-8453
info@rainbowgate.com

Jenny Lind is known as a ceramic artist. She has taught and shown extensively, and has been published widely. She currently shows at Rainbow gate in Santa Fe.

ARTIST STATEMENTS

Jenny Lind

I have been a potter all my adult life. I make things with clay and I paint with clay. There are horses, dogs, chickens, and birds that share my life, a loving husband, three grown children and three grandchildren that dance in my heart. I have a garden growing wild and beautiful, filled with flowers and dried up things. Someone recently remarked as they were looking at the garden, “you must have had a wonderful garden this summer”. I thought, “no, it’s most wonderful now after the summer hail and the wind and the hot sun have done their part”. The garden’s beautiful in its maturity, falling over itself in colored disarray.

Rainbow Gate

Rainbow Gate is a small ceramic production company specializing in custom dinnerware. It was started in 1994 by Allan Walter and Jenny Lind. Both Allan and Jenny work together in all aspects of design. Currently their daughter Anna, now an owner, also helps with design and production. Rainbow Gate employs eleven people who help with different aspects of sales and production. Rainbow Gate is known for it’s bright colors and delightful designs. The work is well crafted, beautiful, and functional.

Jenny and Allan will be showing with Claudia Reese

Elbow Pitcher Christa Assad
Verdigris Clay Studio + Gallery
The Cannery
2801 Leavenworth
San Francisco, CA 94133
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phone (415) 440-2898
christaassad@hotmail.com

http://www.christaassad.com
http://www.verdigrisgallery.com

Christa Assad’s work has recently been featured in Garth Clark’s Shards , Kevin A. Hluch’s The Art of Contemporary Pottery, and Lark Books‘ 500 Teapots. Christa earned degrees from Indiana University (MFA, 2000), and the Pennsylvania State University (BA, 1992). She was awarded a J. William Fulbright Research and Travel Grant (1993), has been named Emerging Artist by Ceramics Monthly (May, 2002), and in 2003 she took four awards in the 11th Annual Strictly Functional Pottery National. Christa and her work most recently appeared at the American Pottery Festival at the Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN, the Ceramics Arts Roadshow in Riverside, CA, and aboard Artstream. Christa is a studio potter and co-owner of Verdigris Clay Studio + Gallery, in San Francisco’s historic Cannery Building.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Making pots provides a few very important things for me: discipline, including regular physical and mental exercise; a measure of creativity and productivity; a role in history as artisan. The choice to pursue potting as a profession came as a bit of a surprise to me at first, but now seems the ideal solution to the puzzle of life. It satisfies the athlete, the academic, and the connoisseur in me alike. I can be my own boss, make my own inventory, and connect with those who buy and use my work. Along with the rewards, there are many lessons to be learned in patience, cooperation, and loss.

Much like learning to play a musical instrument, throwing clay on the wheel requires methodical practice and refinement of technique. Just as scales provide a vocabulary with which musicians can speak to each other, there are rules to making functional pots. I like to think that my work reflects a system of parts that strike a chord. Clarity, as well as harmony, is essential in the attachment of handles, the fit of lids, the curve of spouts.

Working with clay demands specific time and attention, both mentally and physically. In this way, making pots has become another life cycle for me, with the accompanying ebbs and flows.

Square Footed Cups

Christa will be showing with Claudia Reese

Liz Lurie &
Peter Beasecker
8706 Redondo
Dallas,TX 75218
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phone (214) 327-0448
pbeaseck@mail.smu.edu

Liz Lurie currently lives a split residence in Greene, New York and Dallas, Texas.
Liz’s first wood-fire experience was with SuperMud in New York City. She helped to build a single chambered wood kiln with a group from Supermud and then moved to Athens, Georgia where she became a partner in a wood-kiln cooperative. Since then she has worked as a resident artist at ByrdCliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY and Peters Valley Craft School in Layton, NJ. Before she moved to Texas she was a technician at Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester, MA. Presently she maintains a studio in both Texas and New York teaching ceramics in various venues in both areas. Her work is shown in galleries and stores throughout the United States.

Peter Beasecker is a studio artist and Associate Professor of Art at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University where he had taught for the last twelve years. Born in Toledo Ohio, Beasecker received his undergraduate degree from Miami University (Ohio) and a MFA degree from Alfred University. Beasecker has been a visiting artist and workshop leader at over fifity institutions. He has exhibited his work internationally and is in numerous private and public collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Mint Museum in North Carolina.

Liz Lurie
ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up in a household where there was a tremendous respect for things handmade. Furniture, books, paintings and pottery all helped to transform our house into a home. They had warmth, a life, a history, a beauty, and a strength which enriched our lives. They provided solace, were used in celebration, contemplation and sometimes broken in anger. When I go home to visit, they hold rich memories of thirty years of use. It is my hope that my pots provide for their users in a similar manner, and in so doing become an intimate part of the daily rhythm of life.

Peter Beasecker
ARTIST STATEMENT

These pieces represent a combination of things seen and felt in my travels the past couple of years. Encountering Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses has reinvigorated my investigation of interior and exterior space; particularly that enclosed, cavernous space between two imposing walls. Also a simple cylindrical "carrier" I saw at a flee market in Western Massachusetts, resembling an open wooden hat box with a thin metal handle spanning the volume, struck me as a beautifully sparse and sturdy object. Within their own language, both the sculptures and carrier express a sense of clarity and elegance. The pieces in this exhibition reflect my wish to have such qualities in a simple, functional object. The awkwardness of lifting a cup as it scrapes a wall, I hope, will provide a subtle catalyst for seeing and feeling a new relationship with something as familiar as a cup.

Showing with Lisa Orr

Jason Hess
425 S. Taber St.
William, AZ 86046
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phone (928) 523-2398
Jason.Hess@NAU.EDU

Jason Hess was born in 1968 in Red Wing Minnesota. He recieved his BA in studio art from Beloit College in 1991 and his MFA from Utah State University in 1996. Jason now teaches ceramics at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff Arizona. He is an avid wood fire potter and fast water fly fisherman.

ARTIST STATEMENT

A desire to have objects that fulfill specific purposes inspires me to make functional pots. The infinite and elusive variety of texture and color attainable through the various making and firing processes that I use has generated an interest in the notion of presentation. I enjoy presenting my work so that a viewer might notice and appreciate subtle diversities in for and surface. By grouping similar forms of differing size and color I hope to compose a visually dynamic display which invites the viewer to enjoy tha tactile nature of each individual piece and how they relate to one another.

Recent Shows: 2004
Wood Fire 2004	The Clay Studio of Missoula
Strictly Functional Pottery National	Market House Craft Center
Feats of Clay XVII	Lincoln Arts and Culture Foundation
1000 Tea Pots 2	Baltimore Clay Works
Form Follows Function	LillStreet Art Center.

Showing with Marian Haigh

Susan Filley
51 Vincent Dr.
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
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phone (843) 971-9934
fax (843) 971-9105
sfilley@comcast.net

Susan Filley grew up in Chapel Hill, NC. She first studied ceramics and pottery with Mitsuo Kakutani, a Japanese artist and her fascination with functional pots led her on. In 1985 she received her Master’s of Fine Arts in ceramics from LSU and she has since worked as an independent studio artist and potter. Susan’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the Fletcher Challenge Awards in New Zealand, the 21st Century American Ceramics, and Cedar Creek Teapot National. Her works are in the Shiwan Museum in China, the La Grange Museum, Georgia, and many private collections.

Susan currently serves as President for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. Awarded an Artist’s Project grant by the SC Arts Commission in 1999, Susan established an innovative studio gallery in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Recognized in national publications as a unique gallery devoted to ceramics, Clayworks Studio and Gallery is an active working pottery studio and a gallery representing some of the best of American ceramics.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I’ve been working with porcelain for over 20 years and I am still in love with the material. The intrinsic beauty of this dense white clay works well with my affinity toward detail, my enjoyment of color and my passion for elegant forms. Together these pursuits draw me toward the pots that I make. I set challenges for myself to develop new forms and new glazes and my work ranges from small and intimate to large and formal. I always love the days in my studio as the finished forms sit waiting un-glazed. The grace and presence of the form is so important before the pots are glazed and if I find pieces that don’t meet my expectation for strong form or dynamic gesture, I pull those pieces aside and just use them for glaze tests. I want each pot to have its own strength. I like a pot that tells its own story, that asks to be touched, that wants to be used, or tells me to treasure it.

Showing with Rebecca Roberts

Billy Ray Mangham
405 Valley View West Rd.
San Marcos, TX 78666
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phone (512) 754-8171
billyray@zzzdog.com
www.zzzDog.com

BA CERAMICS - 1974 - SAN JOSE STATE U. - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

M.F.A. SCULPTURE - 1977 - STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE U. - NACOGDOCHES, TX.

FOUNDER – CHICKEN FARM POTTERY, NACOGDOCHES, TX. - 1974 – 1980

POTTER IN RESIDENCE – LAGUNA GLORIA ART MUSEUM ART SCHOOL, AUSTIN, TX. 1980-1989

FOUNDER AND EL JEFFE – SLEEPING DOG STUDIO – SAN MARCOS, TX. 1989 – PRESENT

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have been working in clay for over 30 years now. Each day brings new problems and challenges, and each day working with clay brings excitement and hope for the future of mankind as I do my little part to patch together a civilization with materials from the earth. I have specialized in raku for the past 15 years. Most of my work is put together with nails or pins fashioned from NiChrome wire. My work is almost entirely sculptural. “Work hard and have fun” has been my motto from the beginning. Those two ways of being guide me and neither is worth anything without the other.

I am one of the five founders of the Texas Clay Festival held yearly in Gruene, Texas. The year 2004 will be our twelfth year to present a showcase of nearly 50 Texas clay workers. I have taught workshops at the Mechosin Summer School For The Arts in Vancouver, Laloba Ranch in Colorado, Sierra Nevada College at Lake Tahoe, , U.T. Tyler, Southwest Univ. in Georgetown, Cedar Valley College in Dallas, S.F.A.S.U. in Nacogdoches, and two yearly workshops here at my studio.

Showing with Ryan McKerley

Leanne McClurg

101 Beverly Dr.
Baton Rouge, LA 70806
Phone (225) 921-3493
Website: www.LeanneMcClurg.com
McClurgLR@Hotmail.com

Leanne McClurg was born in Medford, Oregon on April 27th, 1973, the daughter of Linda Powell and step-daughter of Tom Stewart.

Raised in Anchorage, Alaska, she graduated Bartlett High School in 1991 then completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in ceramics in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the University of Minnesota in 1997.

In 1999 she moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at Louisiana State University and has exhibited all over the U.S. as well as being an active participant in residencies, internships and museum work.

Currently Leanne is a Full-time Instructor of Art at the Baton Rouge Community College as well as a lively artist in the studio behind her house.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I concern myself with the buoyancy of flesh,
with the delight and the grotesque.
I concern myself with the necessity of sustenance,
with consumption, digestion, and expulsion.
I concern myself with the truthfulness of self,
the sensuousness of touch,
and the peculiarity of life.

It is within my obsession of food, the experience of compulsion, and the sociability of the body that I find my impetus for making pots. I focus on the interaction of the maker, to the object, to the user. As a maker I choose to show my process through my heavy handed approach of using the pinching technique. My presence is evident in the object through the marking of time of repetitive finger marks and careful articulation of form. I work with both earthenware and porcelain to accentuate contrasting ideas about the body. I use porcelain to glorify the purity of naked flesh. For me, earthenware speaks more to the visceral internal spaces of the body as well as the clothes we choose to decorate our bodies with.
Car Cups While I consider the form, I dwell on how the object will interact with the viewer/user. I consider where will the body kiss the object. I ask myself whether within the users interaction will the fingers run over the form or will the tongue? Will they want to bite into the object and not the substance that it contains? Does it meet their body like a lover, new or old?
I make pots so that they are not only used but experienced. The pots are intended to be used socially so that the interaction is felt intimately but publicly. It is through my choices in form, surface, and tactility that I hope to bring awareness to the viewer/user of their own bodies, compulsions, and truth.