Meet the Artist Presenters
Stuart Asprey was born in England and raised in California. He received his MFA from the University of Oklahoma and his BA from Humboldt State University. Stuart’s award winning, irreverently humored artwork regularly exhibits throughout the United States and occasionally in Europe. He has taught workshops at Anderson Ranch, The Armory in West Palm Beach, The Morean Center for Clay, Red Star Studios and numerous universities throughout the United States. He returned to his alma mater in 2012 and is currently an Associate Professor of Ceramics at the University of Oklahoma.
Jamie Bates Slone is currently an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at the University of Oklahoma. She received her MFA from the University of Kansas and her BFA from the University of Central Missouri. Her work addresses the fragility of the human spirit in the midst of physical and mental illness.
Andy Boswell first learned Ceramics from his father, Ray Boswell, a production potter born out of the American Arts and Crafts Tradition. Andy continued his education at the Rochester Institute of Technology and learned from Rick Hirsch, Julia Galloway and Liz Howe. After college Andy met Phil Hamling, a Ceramic Engineer who had a strong interest in Crystalline Glazes and a more scientific approach. Phil was Andy's mentor and provided the foundation needed to bring everything together and do what he does now.
Samantha Briegel is a potter based outside of Baltimore, Maryland. Her work begins with the long history of vessels borrowing forms and vocabulary from human/female bodies. She recently received her MFA in Ceramics from Ohio University (Athens, OH), and has completed residencies in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. Utilizing patterns and textures that come from garments previously worn by the artist herself and her close friends, Briegel reclaims/up-cycles negative feelings of self-image into the celebration of self-acceptance and further introducing viewers to the charm of diverse body features.
Amanda Bury grew up in the Pacific Northwest part of the U.S. She is a lover of the outdoors, and remains forever influenced by her time working summer gigs on farms. She received a Bachelors of Art in Studio Art and a Bachelors of Art in Anthropology from Central Washington University. She then went on to pursue Post-Baccalaureate study in Ceramics at the University of Montana.
Her practice is nourished by time spent in her own garden and she is a big advocate for supporting your local farmer. Amanda's work pays homage to our food origins and the marvelously complex and deeply flawed systems which get food from the ground to our tables everyday. Amanda has served as an artist in residence at The Morean Center for Clay in Saint Petersburg, Florida and Belger Crane Yard Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. She is now working as a full time studio artist based in Advance, NC. She regularly shows in invitational and national juried exhibitions. Her work is held in both public and private collections worldwide.
Elaine Buss received an MFA in Ceramics from The Ohio State University in 2018. Her metaphorical approach to materials has garnered multiple recognitions, including the 2019 Emerging Artist Award from Ceramics Monthly and Best in Show in the University of Montana’s International MFA Exhibition for her installation Wander | Wonder (2018). Most recently, her work was featured in the Art Basel Miami edition of Create! Magazine. She has completed multiple long-term and short-term residencies, including at C.R.E.T.A.Rome in Rome, Italy. Elaine’s other awards include the Global Gateway Grant, The International Award for Visual and Performing Arts, both from Ohio State University, and an ArtistInc Fellowship from the Mid-America Arts Alliance in Kansas City, Missouri. She is currently a Career Resident at Belger Crane Yard Studios in Kansas City, Missouri, where she continues her material research and sculptural practice.
Chandra DeBuse is a studio potter in Kansas City. She received her MFA from the University of Florida in 2010. She has presented her work as a 2012 NCECA Emerging Artist, she was a presenter at the 2016 Utilitarian Clay Symposium at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and at the 2018 Alabama Clay Conference. She is a founding member of Kansas City Urban Potters. She has led over 50 workshops at art centers nationwide.
Diana Fayt is a studio potter, illustrator, and teacher. Her ceramic pieces are part folklore and part personal narrative, documenting both real and imagined stories. Diana’s work can be found in a myriad of public and private art collections both in the United States and abroad. She has been featured on the cover of Ceramics Monthly as well as in numerous international and American Publications, such as The Journal of Australian Ceramics, American Craft and Sunset Magazine. Her roster of clients include Heath Ceramics, Anthropologie and Terrain. Diana has taught workshops at Arrowmont School of Crafts, Santa Fe Clay, Metchosin School Of The Arts, Sierra Nevada College, The Potters Studio, and was a master presenter at Clay Gulgong. A graduate of California College of the Arts, Diana currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon with her partner and sweet pooch, Louie.
Genevieve Flynn was trained as a goldsmith and moved into designing and creating her work in silver and gold in the late 1980's. In her 45-year career she has worked in gold, sterling silver, Argentium silver, precious stones and copper. When fabricating her work and she uses ancient metal techniques such as chasing, repoussé, engraving, granulation (a process that fuses gold to silver), saw piercing, gold leaf application and many others are incorporated to add detail, interest and beauty. Her studio has allowed her to teach silversmithing techniques and workshops as well as bring national and international instructors in to offer workshops in their specialty of metals for over 20 years. Her work has been published in numerous articles and magazines through the years. Her work has been exhibited nationally in group exhibitions and solo exhibitions, recently exhibited internationally at the Zilvermuseum in Schoonhoven, Netherlands. She has received many awards and accolades including the International Saul Bell Design Award.
Brett Freund is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and has studied and traveled in a variety of areas in the United States. After a residency at St. Petersburg Clay Company in Florida Brett received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and later was awarded the Lormina Salter Fellowship from Baltimore Clayworks. He exhibits nationally and was chosen as 2012 Emergency Artist by Ceramics Monthly. He currently live in Minneapolis, MN
Shannon Garson is an Australian ceramic artist, writer and curator with a studio practice spanning 20 years that includes commissions for festivals, exhibitions at public and private galleries, and arts advocacy. Shannon’s practice encompasses both handmade tableware and exhibition work, she works with Australian porcelain. Shannon works across a range of media using drawing, ceramics , photography and performance to investigate the relationship between human activity and the infinite variety of striations, spots, and marks found in nature.
Arthur Halvorsen received his BFA in Ceramics from the Maine College of Art. His artwork uses bright colors, textures and patterns on earthenware, gathering inspiration from pop art, coloring books and tattoos. Based in Boston, MA, he teaches classes and workshops at Mudflat Studios as well as Lesley University in Cambridge. His work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, Pottery Making Illustrated, Studio Potter, and ArtScope Magazine. Arthur has been recognized as a 2019 Brother Thomas Fellow recipient for his work in the field of ceramics within the Boston area.
Luke Haynes was born and raised across the American South. With a formal training in art and architecture at Cooper Union, New York, Haynes continues to experiment with quilting art while exploring art and architecture across the globe.
A chance encounter with a box of fabric remnants sparked his imagination. His first quilt, measuring 7′ x 10′, led him through years of experimentation and improvements over the years that he has been quilting. Further honing his style, he developed a system to piece manageable parts into a larger whole, applying a modern design sense to a familiar process. He uses reclaimed materials from the communities he works with in his projects to speak with the textile language of the area. Subverting the traditional quilting form by integrating modern concepts, his art transforms the comfortably familiar into the visually evocative.
Steven Hill has been a functional potter since 1974, originally working out of a backyard studio and selling his work mostly at art festivals. By the mid 1990’s he was looking for a way to expand his studio, to begin a resident artist program for aspiring potters, and to provide space for other ceramic artists to work. Red Star Studios became the home of Steven Hill Pottery from 1998 - 2006. Between 2006 and 2010 Steven lived in Sandwich, IL and co-founded Center Street Clay. Steven is now working at 323 Clay in Independence, MO and concentrating on what he does best, making pots and teaching!
Steven Hill received his BFA from Kansas State University in 1973. His work is featured in nationally juried shows and in many ceramics books. Steven has taught over 250 workshops throughout the United States and Canada and has written ten ceramic articles.
Meredith Host was born and raised in Detroit Rock City. She received her BFA in Ceramics from Kansas City Art Institute in 2001 and her MFA in Ceramics from The Ohio State University in 2008. Meredith has spent time at numerous ceramic residencies including The School for American Crafts at RIT in Rochester, NY, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME, and Dresdner Porzellan Manufactory in Dresden, Germany. She was named one of the 2011 Emerging Artists for NCECA and Ceramics Monthly. Currently, Meredith lives in Kansas City, MO and is a full time studio potter. She has an extensive collection of patterned knee socks and taxidermy shoulder mounts and is a self-proclaimed horror dork and root beer connoisseur.
Sam Hostert studied painting and drawing at Santa Clara University, then received her Masters in Education from DePaul University. She has taught art in various capacities for years including high school, community art centers, and corporate team-building workshops. Clay has been a growing component of her life over the past several years and has finally won out over most other things. She currently teach ceramics at Lillstreet Art Center, makes her own work, and is at home part time with her 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter.
Glynnis Lessing first became interested in clay at age 9, when she learned to throw from Japanese potter, Norboru Kubo, at Carleton College. She continued her pursuit of clay by apprenticing with Bob Broderson when she was 17, and went on to study with Curt Hoard and Warren Mackenzie at the University of Minnesota, graduating from there with a Bachelor of Fine arts. She completed further studies at Macalester College and then moved to Chicago to work and raise a family.
Soon, she was working, studying, and teaching at Lill-street, influenced by many other professional potters who worked and taught at the Chicago-based clay center. Although she has been making and selling pots since1989, in 2008 she started participating in shows and art fairs on a full-time basis, eventually moving back to Minnesota in 2012 and reconnecting with her mid-western pottery roots. She maintains a studio in her grandfather's old milking parlor on the ancestral farm, where she lives with her family, surrounded by their small flock of chickens, the trees her grandfather planted, and the fertile earth.
Suze Lindsay is a studio potter living and working in the western NC Mountains. Her ceramic studies include a two-year fellowship from 1987-89 at Penland School of Crafts as a “core student”, followed by earning an MFA from Louisiana State University. She also holds two educational degrees, one in special education and the other in Montessori teaching theory. In 1996, after completing three years as an artist in residence at Penland, Suze and her husband, potter Kent McLaughlin, set up and began potting in their studio in Bakersville, NC under the name Fork Mountain Pottery.
Matt Long received his MFA at Ohio University in 1997, his BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute in 1995. He is currently an Assistant Professor at The University of Mississippi, running the ceramics area. He has been a potter for 22 years, and currently reside in Oxford Mississippi where he teaches and has a studio at home. Matt is well known for his work with soda fired porcelain, work that is fluid in lines and luscious in surface and glaze applications. His work lends a softened sense of the dramatic to porcelain form. His works have quickly become recognizable entities on the forefront of the ceramic art world. Possessing a charming sense of humor and kind manner, he has become a popular workshop instructor throughout this country.
Katie Marks is a ceramic artist located in Portland, OR. Born in San Francisco, she grew up in Seattle, WA. From the age of 3 she has had a passion for clay, and began wheel throwing in 2007. Katie studied under her mentor, ceramic artist Matthew Patton, for 4 years (2012-2016) as his dedicated apprentice and studio assistant. In 2013, Katie started Silver Lining Ceramics out of her studio apartment in Seattle’s Belltown area.
Inspired by the otherworldly-yet-purposeful beauty of nature and the cosmos, Katie’s work plays with color and texture to create joyous forms that are also functional sculptures.
José Maria Mariscal is from a family of potters. He learned from his father at an early age in La Bisbal de Empordá and has lived the potter’s life since childhood, passing from one studio to another until he opened his own in 2003 and began researching and discovering the world of crystalline glazes, raku and so on. Though he has no formal academic training, he is regarded as a Master Potter in his home of la Generalitat de Catalunya (Spain). José Mariscal has conducted throwing and Crystalline glazes workshops in Dunedin (USA), Netherlands, Belgium, Israel, Australia and across Spain.
George Metropoulos McCauley, known for his pottery and narrative sculpture, has been influenced by his interest in Asia, ritual, mysticism, folk art and his Greek Heritage. He identifies his approach to handling clay as casual and finds common ground with the Momoyama Period, Bizen and Iga Ware. Typically his pots are decorated with colorful non-literal floral designs applied with his fingers, hands as well as brushes mixed on the clay surface in a painterly approach. McCauley also does high temperature wood firing and is in the forefront in the low fire wood firing movement. He is equally known for his Wood Fire/ Red Neck Majolica Process and George’s House of Clay Wednesday Night Videos Series on Instagram and You Tube.
Along with his functional ware, McCauley makes narrative sculpture combining clay with wood, metal, found and handmade spurious archival objects. In addition to his work in clay, McCauley has made several films related to ceramics, helping craft the stories, makers and development of the field. He has also developed exchange programs which bring Asian and American potters together in order to travel, work and exhibit.
Kip O’Krongly is a studio artist and instructor living in Northfield, MN. She earned a BA from Carleton College in 2001, and continued her ceramics education in clay studios across the country before returning to Minnesota as the Northern Clay Center Fogelberg Fellow, Materials Technician, and then Anonymous Potter Studio Fellow. Kip has been featured as a Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist, on the cover of Pottery Making Illustrated, and was a Best in Show winner of the Strictly Functional Pottery National Exhibition. She exhibits work and teaches workshops across the country, is included in a number of ceramic publications and in 2014 was the recipient of a $25,000 McKnight Artist Grant.
Sarah Pike is a full time potter living and making pots in Fernie, British Columbia, Canada. She makes functional slab-built pottery in her home studio on a an acre of land on the edge of a little ski town. She lives in a renovated old mining house with her husband, two kids and a dog named Enzo.
Brenda Quinn was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her interest in ceramics started during her sophomore year of college, however her fondness for functional and domestic objects goes back to her childhood.
She attended Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where she received a BFA in ceramics. Brenda then went on to receive her MFA in ceramics from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She currently lives, works, and teaches in New York. She maintains a studio in her home where she lives with her husband, two daughters, three cats and two guinea pigs.
Brenda works with porcelain, combining hand-building and wheel-throwing to create objects that strike a balance between utility and aesthetics. Most of her pots are functional and intended to be used. Each pot is unique, and she is constantly exploring new forms and glazes.
Justin Paik Reese is a studio potter out of Youngstown, Ohio. Some of his influences include 90’s pop culture, retro video games, and Korean pottery and patterning. He fires to cone 10/11 in his soda kiln, often looking for rich carbon-trapping with bright, electric celadons.
Kate Schroeder is a ceramicist and full time professional artist residing in Kansas City, Missouri. She received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Ceramics from the University of Central Missouri and a Masters of Fine Arts also emphasizing Sculpture and Ceramics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Although her academic focus was on sculptural forms, Kate has spent the last 7 years as a potter, focusing on functional works. She is currently a Red Star Career Resident at Belger Crane Yard Studios. In addition to her career as a professional artist, she also spent nearly a decade as an adjunct educator, and several years managing a ceramics studio/ Not-For-Profit arts organization, which specialized in teaching art to people with disabilities. Kate has also spent the last 3 years developing a business as a jeweler. In this business she makes braille jewelry and has recently partnered with the National Braille Press.
Melanie Sherman is a ceramic artist, born in Germany and currently residing and working in Kansas City, Missouri. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her background is in graphic design, where she developed an eye for pattern and decoration. In her ceramics she combines her love for ornamentation and her fascination with the history of ceramics, referencing 18th century European porcelain. Melanie has been a resident at The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado and Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri.
McKenzie Smith is a potter working in Florida. Mckenzie worked as a Core Student at the Penland School of Crafts. He received his BFA from the University of South Florida and his MFA from the University of Florida. Residencies include the Archie Bray Foundation, Banff Center for the Arts, Baltimore Clay Works, and the University of Miami. Mckenzie has exhibited widely and taught numerous workshops. He is known for functional stoneware pottery influenced by English folk pottery. The pots are typically wheel thrown and often altered. Areas are left unglazed to contrast the warm stoneware color with the tan, black, and occasionally blue brush strokes. Regarding firing, Smith says, “I am drawn to wood and salt/soda firing because of the rich effects these firings techniques have on the clay, slips, and glazes I use.”
David Stevens grew up in Oklahoma City, where he recieved his BFA at Oklahoma City University followed by receiving his MFA from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. He is now an adjunct professor of ceramics and foundations at the University of Oklahoma.