POW! Pots on Wheels!

POW! Pots On Wheels.

Our KickStarter will start this Tuesday November 4, 2104

Click the blue button to go to our KickStarter and check out our project video and rewards

POW! (Pots On Wheels!) is a collaborative group of functional potters who seek to connect our love of pots with all kinds of people by bringing shows, projects, and collaborations directly to communities in our mobile gallery/project space. We love the culture of the ceramic community, its makers and collectors, but want to want to reach new audiences—young and older audiences and folks who might never before have touched clay, used handmade pots, or have any idea about how pots are made.  A renovated a 17ft step van will reach underserved neighborhoods and settings where space is at a premium and otherwise unavailable. The van will also serve as an educational gallery to exhibit collaborative projects that POW! members engage in with one another, colleagues, students, and communities, as well as be flexible enough to serve as a workshop for specially designed projects.

We are building partnerships with museums, art centers, schools, and community centers to bring POW! to life. With the support of organizations that have been working for decades we will bring an engaging experience of clay to a broader audience. POW! promises a fresh approach:

Action+Education+Exhibition+Collaboration

Getting to the Surface - Workshop at Pittsburgh Arts-Center for the Arts

Getting to the Surface http://pittsburgharts.org/ Location: Scaife Building Room: Ceramics Aug 25-29, 2014 Meets 10:00 AM-4:00 PM on Mon Tue Wed Th Fri Level: Intermediate/Advanced Work with Massachusetts-based master artist Adero Willard to learn how to create new and exciting surfaces on clay by layering color and pattern, and playing with principles of transparency and opacity. The goal of these explorations is to generate new ways to work with form and surface that bring out the personality of your clay forms. A basic understanding of how to work with clay is required. This workshop is part of PCA’s new Master Artist Workshop Series. Instructor -- Adero Willard Adero Willard currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts where she is a studio potter and instructor of ceramics at Holyoke Community College. Previously, Adero taught at the Chautauqua Institute and Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY. Adero received a BFA from Alfred University in 1995 and an MFA at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006, where she studied with Walter Ostrom and Neil Forrest. In 2008 she completed a one-year residency at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine. As a full-time artist, Adero has shown in a number of galleries and craft shows, including Ferrin Gallery, Craft Boston and the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, DC. Adero's decoration techniques are being featured in a book on glazes being released in August 2014 by Quarto Publishing. Her lifelong interest in surface decoration is fueled by a passion for textile design, painting, and collage. View her work at aderowillard.com. Required supplies for this class: The ceramics studio will be open until midnight for the duration of the class, for students who wish to work independently outside of class time.

Looking through windows of one kind and another

It has been a very cold and snowy winter here in western Massachusetts. Having a view of the river from my pottery studio is one of the things I always look forward too about coming in to work. However, this winter all that view has done is reinforce the conditions.

So while March is making me look forward to Spring's warmer temps, I am also looking forward to being one of the ceramic artists included in AKAR's annual Yunomi Invitational. The show has not yet been posted to their site, but I will send out a link once it is. I was in the show last year too, and every piece sold -- so get there early!

Yunomi (or Unomi, depending who you ask) are one of the ceramic forms I most enjoy making. I like the proportion; I like that since it lacks a handle there are new ways to think about how it is held; I like that AKAR is a venue that cultivates the internationality of pottery.

My designs on the pieces included in this year's show follow a theme similar to the this one. 

If you know my work, you might be surprised by the mono-chromatic nature of this design. Don't worry: I am not about to abandon color!

But I do enjoy how the positive/negative contrasts become more prominent with a pared down palette. I like the "windows" that the decoration moves through and around, and alterations to the form that invite the hand to hold it.

In some new pieces that I am in the process of making now, I am taking some of these ideas a step or two further. I want the geometry and the organic elements to interact more. (That light blue you see is the wax I use for resist techniques.)

The natural light helps take some sting out of the winter.

Besides yunomi as a drinking vessel, I am working on some pots that bring some of the same proportionality and design theme to different objects. There is something about the ceremonial quality that is making me excited to see how these will come out (they are waiting for their first firing).

So here's to March and new beginnings...and getting to summer.