By Anne Gilliam

“I want to take a piece of your Hill Country home with me,” a visitor from Scotland told Susie Fowler at her Shade Tree Potter studio. The unusual indentations on his selected stoneware piece were made using native prickly pear cactus flowers and dirt daubers’ nests. Not only will the handcrafted pot preserve his memories of Central Texas, but it will also serve as a prized addition to his art collection back home.

Contemporary ceramic art is not always purchased or created for its functionality. However, unlike most art forms, this one has its roots firmly planted in utilitarian objects. Native Americans used clay to build vessels and figurines for culinary, ritualistic, and architectural purposes. Although rich in design, these pieces were usually considered the result of acquired skill rather than artistic inspiration. Clay works by the country’s European settlers were placed in the realm of daily necessities, as opposed to craft or art.

It wasn’t until the Aesthetic movement of the late 19th century and its offspring, the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements, in the early 20th century that the art world dramatically emphasized art and ornamentation in the production of decorative arts, including “art pottery” and ceramics of all kinds. No longer synonymous with “craft,” ceramics charged into the category of collectible fine art. “Art potteries” handcrafted clay vases and art objects, and pottery manufacturers hired sculptors to model vases and dinnerware. By the 1940s, museums began showcasing the work of clay artists such as Eva Zeisel (still producing art at 100 years old), who was invited to exhibit her 1946 “Museum Series” of fine china at the Museum of Modern Art.

Today, Central Texas abounds with artists using clay to create art objects of unique design and natural beauty. They are supported by galleries, studio spaces, and events devoted to their work.

Artists Honoring Nature in Their Work
The founder of Sunset Canyon Pottery in Dripping Springs, Bridget Hauser, relies on nature’s forms for spiritual and artistic inspiration. For example, many of her bowls and vases transform into sculpted ears of corn, plants, or flowers. In her latest series of sculptural “earth pillow” pieces, she explores the textures of leaves, vines, fungus, and other “forest debris” that blanket the land. For Earth Pillow Fungi, Hauser replicated three-dimensional, cup-like fungi emerging from a bed of leaves and twigs, then placed the bed atop a hollow, satin-smooth “pillow.” Hauser’s work reminds us of nature’s own mastery of artistic design in even the tiniest details.

A brightly colored, fantastical world inhabits the delicate porcelain pieces by Sunyong Chung of Ginko Studios in Austin. Chung’s motifs depict fanciful and exotic flowers, dragonflies, garlic blossoms, and fish. Her process is based on the time-honored Japanese nerikome technique, in which intricate surface designs and colors are created with inlays of sliced, sushi-like cross sections of a three-dimensional, compressed nerikome log. Chung’s native Korean culture and her mother’s traditional embroidery influence her work, as do abstract forms from modern and contemporary art. In Austin, her work is available at Women & Their Work Gallery, which also keeps a bridal registry for Chung’s dinnerware.

Susie Fowler also pays tribute to nature through her work by using organic “tools” she gathers from around her country home to create her signature large-scale pots and functional ware. When asked about nature’s effect on her work, she explains: “While caretaking my slice of the Hill Country, I collect bits of nature’s textures and patterns—deer teeth, seed pods, plants, feathers, and roots—and then actually imprint them into the stoneware slabs and finely grained porcelain of my pots to make the engraved design.” In doing this, Fowler captures, preserves, and literally carves the earth’s vitality into the clay where collectors may experience it daily.

A Supportive Clay Community
The abundance of quality clay art in the region is due, in part, to the large number of resources for amateur and professional ceramicists. One of the first clay studios in Austin, Feats of Clay Pottery Studio & Gallery, celebrated its 30th anniversary in June 2006. The studio holds workshops and classes, and represents a number of clay artists in a changing display of wheel-thrown and hand-built clay works.

ClayWays Pottery Studio & Gallery, also in Austin, showcases the work of over 35 professional potters and serves as a teaching studio. To celebrate its 10th anniversary in Spring 2006, ClayWays exhibited art by many artists whose work and careers the gallery fostered during the past decade. Two well-known Central Texas potters who teach classes and exhibit their work at ClayWays are Diana Seidel and Stanley Irvin.

Diana Seidel works primarily with wheel-thrown stoneware and rich matte glazes to make pieces for daily use in the home, such as dinnerware, serving ware, and vases. Although her work is conventional in its functionality, there’s nothing predictable about it. By constantly experimenting with single details of form, color, glaze, and technique, Seidel fashions each of her pieces into an individually unique, perfectly composed symphony of elements. Her curvaceous teapot, for example, features a symmetrical design with flowing lines and tranquil, carefully juxtaposed colors, all working to create an elegantly crafted and balanced work of art.

Tactile, playful, and graceful describe the imaginative work of St. Edward’s University art professor, Stan Irvin. He uses subtle, earth-toned glazes to enhance the sensuous forms and elegant lines of his work, which includes vessels and dinnerware, as well as sculpted art pieces. The glazes work in concert with the whimsy of his modular, engineered teapots, the surrealistic foot-long spouts of his ewers, and the nimble, three-dimensional swirl designs on one of his serving ware series. Irvin says that the nature of the medium reminds him of “the value of rhythm and commitment in one’s life and work,” but that being playful and thinking outside the box leads to the most surprising and fulfilling aspects of creating in clay. Irvin is committed to spreading the gospel of clay—he teaches students of all ages and has helped found various Central Texas clay educational programs, exhibitions, and community groups. Irvin is also represented by Sunset Canyon Pottery.

In 2004, five veteran Austin potters organized the first annual “Art of the Pot” tour and exhibition, held Mother’s Day weekend. On this special weekend, they open their studios to show their art, along with that of a number of exceptional Texas and national ceramic artists invited to participate. Austin’s active community of clay artists has also formed The Greater Austin Area Clay Artists group that lists clay events and opportunities to exhibit.

Ideas on Displaying Ceramic Art
A challenging aspect of collecting ceramics is learning how best to display the work in your home. Austin interior designer Ryan Jackson, president of Laird Jackson Consulting, recommends grouping similar pieces to create a “visual inventory.” For example, consider displaying pieces by one artist, or all teapots, all figurines, or all similarly themed pieces, together on a wall, table, or shelving. By being organized, contained, and placed together, you can remember what you have, it “looks collected,” and you can create focused conversation around the collection.

For one special piece of clay art, Jackson encourages collectors to allow the piece to stand on its own merits. He recommends against “posing” an artwork with other objects in a contrived vignette, or over-highlighting the object with a harsh spotlight. Jackson suggests blending the object into a room of balanced design, while using elegant highlighting techniques, such as subtle and well-designed lighting, displaying it in a niche, or painting the wall behind the object with a complementary color.

To learn more about the artists, studios, and events mentioned, please visit the following Web sites: sunsetcanyonpottery.com, shadetreepotter.com, ginkopottery.com, www.womenandtheirwork.org, clayways.com, dianaseidel.com, myweb.stedwards.edu/stanleyi, artofthepot.com, and austinclay.org.

Anne Gilliam holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Art History and has worked professionally in the arts and cultural industry for more than 16 years, in arts administration, programming, and policy; arts writing; and museums and galleries.