Martha Grover

Martha Grover's pottery is enchanting. Her imagery straddles the fence between botanical and sexual in a way that is sensual, uncomfortable, and exciting all at once. The artist's website has many many more mouth watering images.Grover also has several images demonstrating the functionality of her darling boxes and incredible perfume bottles in her online portfolio.


(images via Red Lodge Clay Center and artist's own website)

Wendy Walgate

Drooling always.


Wendy's sculptures are playful, abstract, creative, many, colorful, poignant, varied, beautiful, uncomfortable, and delicious.



This is slip casting at it's best.

Find Miss Walgate at her blog and on her new website.

(images via artist's blog)

Jeanne Quinn

She inspires my ambition to design ceramic lighting elements.

Visit the artist's portfolio site to view more images of her incredible work.

(all images via artist's own website)

On Etsy: Ninainvorm

the artist... Nina van de Goor
the artist's shop
the artist's work
the artist's blog

why I like it... Nina's work is mostly modified vintage ceramics. She does some of her own slip-casting to create lovely little amorphous bowls. Her real talent is in printmaking for which she uses vintage ceramic and her own bowls as the canvas. Her prints blend retro paisley, modern geometrics, traditional florals, and her own quirky illustrations which she arranges in a sort of whimsical collage on each peace.

Her work brings me to a question that I would like to put out there in the vast cyber-world of mudslingers... What constitutes ceramic art? Is Nina van de Goor a ceramist or a printmaker? Can she be both? Leave some comments on this topic if you'd like, I'd love to hear what anyone thinks about this.

Ceramics Monthly May 2009

... The Emerging Artists issue... Loved it, loved it, loved it. I know it's a little late and we are all already feeling the joy that is Diana Fayt's cover in the June issue, but I still wanted to share my favorites from last month because there were so many.

Shay Church now lives and works in his home state of Michigan once again after completing his MFA at San Jose State University in 2007. His work explores the relationship between humans and nature by showcasing clay in its most simple state-- wet. By allowing our beloved medium to generate its own life cycle away from the effects of the flame, Church allows us to witness the fragility of our world and ruminate upon our footsteps.

(image via Flickr member durga_akv)

Merrie Wright works out of Tyler, Texas and also explores the relationship between humans and nature. Her exploration leads us to examine the means for survival which animals are left with in the current state of our grand environment. Her work asks us what happens when nature and industrialization collide.

(image via Flickr member clamtrafficjam)

Ryan Olsen is an artist in residence at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana... my own home sweet home... His work is so beautiful that the viewer is nearly blind to its crazy functionality. Olsen's work at first glance enchants viewers with the magic of an intricate blossom. Upon closer inspection, however, the viewer discovers that these pieces are not in fact botanical-like sculptures but fully functioning sets of pottery that are entangled in each other to create a magnificent work of art. The balance between beauty and function perfectly echoes the wonders we experience in the natural world.

(image via Lovell Chronicle)

Joseph Page is an unconventional clay artist from Walla Walla, Washington. His fearlessness in choosing and combining unkosher materials is a breath of fresh air. Page's illustrative sculptures evoke images of atom bombs and Dr. Seuss, farm life and Mario Brothers, cotton candy and scientific diagram. This artist's unique combination of imagery mirrors his combination of materials (porcelain and polystyrene foam?) as both ask the viewer "Is this really okay?"

(image via artist's own website)

Andréa Keys hails from Athens, Ohio. She is a figurative sculptor who says her work is "driven by a desire to investigate how an individual's personal history affects their identity, behaviors, and actions." I haven't seen that in her work through photos here and there, but I am greatly intrigued by the expressiveness of her figures. There is a curious innocence or naivety that pours from these sculptures that asks me, "Why are you staring at me?" And I don't have an answer. And that makes me want to keep staring.

(image via ArtAxis.org)

Raymond González is a young sculptor currently working in Gainsville, Florida. His shocking and vibrant curios seem like a cross breed between Virginia Scotchie's work and those cheap little personal massagers one can purchase from Walgreens in the health aisle. González's use of alternative materials and surfaces like car enamel and radiant light technology is inspiring. His objects are irresistible and the viewer most definatly looks at them with a tactile longing for it seems to hold them and tinker about with their functions would be an ultimate experience.

(image via Amarillo Museum of Art)

Virginia Scotchie

Virginia Scotchie for years has been one of my absolute favorite ceramic artists. Her pieces, for the most part, lack actual functionality but their forms are in constant dialogue about function. The 'gizmo' effect created by Scotchie's unique modeling and glazing cause viewers to reach for these objects uncontrollably. We want to feel them. We want to know what they do. Scotchie's ability to shape these ambiguous objects that beg for our attention is admirable and perplexing. I strive every moment I am touching clay to do the same... make absolutely nothing from something.

In this video, towards the end you can see Scotchie's installation of spheres in the sculpture garden at the Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum. On her website you can watch a great video of the whole process of the installation.

(all images from artist's own website)