🎧 Curious Beauty—A Way Through: Holly Walker’s Pots and Process Erin Shafkind

Appears in the June/July/August 2025 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

Imagine an ant wandering over the surface of a pot. This ant is smart and wonders, “What’s over here? What is the terrain like around this corner? Oooh, what is this projectile? This part sticks out—an elongated half circle on the vertical side of a form. Here’s another shape angling up on a diagonal. Why is this here?” Pretty soon there are two ants, and now there are more. There’s no invasion, it is an exploratory crew in the mind and hands of earthenware potter Holly Walker. In a recent video interview, she shared with me the concept of imagining herself in miniature—like an ant, roaming, investigating, finding new constructions on the surface of her own forms, excited, curious, open to the new and profound. I love this appreciation for ants, especially since I do not usually welcome them as explorers in my home. 

Walker has been working with clay for close to 50 years, although her BFA is in painting. As a Core Fellow at Penland School of Craft in Bakersville, North Carolina, from 1979–1981, Walker learned the essence of her craft and committed herself to clay. In 1990, she went on to receive an MFA in ceramics, with a minor in painting, from Louisiana State University studying with Joe Bova and Linda Arbuckle. She loves building with her hands and moving color over the surface. She shared, “The advantage of clay over paint; we have these wonderful three-dimensional surfaces, there are all these sides to consider, and move with.” As she speaks her hands lift like a conductor of an orchestra. I can almost hear music in her descriptions of what she sees, how she builds, her note-taking process, and her fundamental commitment to discovery. She plays piano, too, and music connects to her making like the ants marching across staff lines leaving notes as they suggest sound and form. 

Aspects of Walker’s journey flow like a serendipitous song. As she packed before leaving graduate school in Louisiana, a pine-scented pillow embroidered with the word “Maine” fell from a high, unexplored shelf in her closet. A sign from the universe, destiny was sending her to Maine. She served as executive director at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine from 1990–1995. Afterward, she was called back to Penland and worked in different capacities at the school until 2007. She now lives in Vermont with her husband and Oboe the cat. 

The Jar Contains Eternity 

I asked, “What pieces are you most excited about currently?” “Jars. Without a doubt,” she answered, clear as a bell. “Not knowing what is on the inside, and they have volume all around them. They provide opportunities to consider the surface, the glazing and slip work, and how that will move around on the form. The form is the geography on the pot and the surface is the nature on it or the light, the movement, or even the song on it.” She discussed the parallels between clay and playing piano. “Chords, harmonies, sometimes awkward and jarring, there are so many paths it can take.”

We talked about aesthetics and function and she said, “My work looks functional but doesn’t always serve that way.” Her pressing concern is beauty, “I will sacrifice function for beauty. Beauty is a form of function. It’s calming, exuberant, it slows us down in the course of a day.” She says, “The beauty of pottery to me is its intimacy and closeness. I’m working on small pieces in my hands, and I paint them in my hands, my face is a couple inches from the work. Something else happens with that intimacy with the work.” 

Intimacy and Beauty—A Conversation with Clay 

“I’m collaborating with the material I’m using so I feel like it’s a two-way conversation that is ongoing. When I make a piece, I look at it and ask or think, ‘What do you want, what would you like, what is this thing hanging out here?’” She’s delighted by these conversations and the notion that one form begets another and tells me, “If this line had come around this way, it could set up a vibration or a movement that could be intriguing. Then I’ll make it again and the form might change. I’m not dedicated to preserving the same form each time, I like for there to be a bit of variety even though they are related, and so the next time I try my second thought.” She composes with her pieces stating, “That’s the kind of collaboration I mean. In doing this I am taking a risk, I haven’t thought this way before. Sometimes I have to put it aside. Then, I come back to it and give it a thorough looking over. This provides the next opportunity.” Her notebook is filled with little sketches and responses in another color. Animated by her process she continues, “In my notebook, I only draw the forms after I make them. I’ll write, ‘Yuck,’ or ‘Lovely,’ and ‘I love this part, but next time, change these colors,’ ‘Try it this way.’” 

Pinching Earth 

Dancer and potter Paulus Berensohn, whom she met at Penland, holds a special space in Walker’s heart. “Almost everything that came out of his mouth was very generous,” she shares, “He also taught me how to help someone get up a hill—literally where you push on their back, you press right here above the tailbone.” Over video she stands up to gesture to her lower back, smiling as she recounts the story. I take this as an extension and expression of teaching, care, and support. We care for what we make, care for ourselves and each other. Berehnson’s book, Finding One’s Way with Clay, published in 1972, is a must-read for any potter working today. His insights remind us to breathe, feel, explore, and connect. Listening to Walker is like this, too, she continued about his workshop, “The first project we made we were blindfolded, we pinched cups and passed them around without seeing.” We can imagine the trust building, the calm, the presence, I wonder, fifty years later—could we do this now? Does the 21st century allow this same kind of trust? And if not, what do we need to learn, understand, and accept to build it? The clay teaches us as well, pushing gently from behind. 

Walker works with iron-rich earthenware clay. She starts most forms by patting out the clay with her hands, then she chooses a pattern and cuts out a base, she then rolls the first coil, attaches, and pinches. She says, “Working this slow allows me to imagine the form I want to see take shape.” With her patient, deliberate technique, doing one layer at a time, sometimes her finger marks show, other times her speed or tempo is inscribed on the surface. She continues adding coils and pinching on a banding wheel, turning and looking, adding handles and projections. Lids can be challenging and involve considerations of time, shrinkage, and fit. She’ll often apply colored slips at the leather-hard stage. After the bisque, she works with low-fire glazes, her recipes range in opacity, both matte and glossy. The saturation of the iron in the clay is powerful, so slips act like gesso on a canvas. In Petal Plate: Ring and Loop the yellow slip underneath the turquoise glaze is practically vibrating in harmony with the orange radiating lines over the red clay body. The gray circle in the center adds a resting calm and focus, while the outer petals’ red-orange tips are the perfect cozy end cap to the form. My eye keeps looping to the electric elbows of the orange triangle shapes, over and under, over and under, like I’m a kid on one of those child-propelled merry-go-rounds at a local park; I’m also flying above it, getting a bird’s eye view, not quite dizzy, but certainly delighted. 

No Trespassing as a Way Through 

We discussed the color relationships on the surface of her forms and she giddily spoke about a sign she’d seen on a walk in the woods. Walker encountered a path of possibility and describes her experience, “I noticed a new ‘No Trespassing’ sign; the size of the black lettering on the egg-yolk yellow background, the texture of the gray birch bark, the green moss growing at the bottom, the woods behind it, the darkness of everything, the largeness of the woods, sent me home to make a series of palettes on the color idea.” Walker chooses not to photograph her inspiration and does not own a smartphone—everything lives in her memory. In her studio, she proceeds into a conversation with the clay. Looking at the accompanying image of Palette: Octagons we can see her interpretations of the egg-yolk yellow, juicy in its fertile saturation, the other hues colliding and combining like chords in her symphony of shape. The black bridge or ladders over green rectangles of moss, growing, loamy, connecting geometry, each color and shape purposeful and fluid, yet simple in their stance. Symmetry and its fraternal twin asymmetry, balance with tension on her forms and she carefully hand paints her surfaces with glaze one wobbly section at a time. 

She rounds out her story with, “Everything out there can be used as inspiration.” The country roads near her are often patched due to the freeze-and-thaw cycle. She sees incredible drawings she calls tar snakes. With a wide smile, she states, “Always look for what is useful, look for what you are drawn toward, and try to ascertain why—what is it about this that’s calling me, that has my attention, what beauty can I find in this?” 

To learn more about Holly Walker go to hollywalkerceramics.com and visit her exhibition at Blue Spiral Gallery (bluespiral1.com), July 4–August 27, 2025. 

the author Erin Shafkind is an artist and educator living in Seattle, Washington. To learn more, visit www.erinshafkind.com and Instagram @eshaffy. 

June/July/August 2025: Table of Contents

Must-Reads from Ceramics Monthly

• 🎧 Pax Lighting: Modern Craft of Lighting
• 🎧 Altering Organic Forms
• 🎧 Pattern, Obsession, and History: Visual Interpretation with Elisabeth Kley