🎧 Ginny Sims: Concept and Utility Kate Mothes

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.

“The line between idea and utility, concept, and skill, is fuzzy—I don’t worry too much about that,” says Ginny Sims. “I have so many ideas and such little time; all I can do is make the work I have to make and think on it later.” For the Minneapolis-based artist, pottery represents endless potential to explore all aspects of humanity, reflecting myriad social, political, historical, and personal narratives. 

Inspired by English folk ceramics juxtaposed with the advent of mass production in the 19th century, Sims’ idiosyncratic tableware, vessels, and sculptures merge a wide range of influences. Her circuitous route into the field through stints in different potteries throughout Europe instilled lessons along the way that coalesce in the pieces she makes today. 

Making a Life in Clay 

Sims minored in studio art in college, but she was dismayed by the lack of enthusiasm in the university’s art department at the time. Seeking new experiences once she graduated, she journeyed across the Atlantic in search of opportunities that could invigorate a sense of purpose in both her life and work. She spent time in London, then answered an advertisement to assist for a little while at a family pottery in Centola, Italy, before trading the Mediterranean climate for the northern reaches of Scotland’s historic Isle of Iona. 

The island in the Inner Hebrides is known for its iconic medieval monastery and is home to fewer than 200 residents, mostly crofters. Sims stayed in a caravan on the neighboring Isle of Mull, riding a borrowed bike to the ferry that whisked her to Iona every day. Anticipating that she would help in the family studio, things didn’t go quite to plan. “The first day was awful,” she says. “The clay was different, the wheel was different. I felt like an idiot for getting all the way there and to fail like this, to waste their time.” But she knew how to roll out some slabs and make plates, so the family kept her on for the summer to do odd jobs and occasional potting. She adds, “I can’t believe they paid me.” 

From Scotland, Sims traveled to Ireland, then to Barcelona for a few months, then back to London. But when opportunities for work in ceramics studios became scarce, she prepared to head back to Little Rock, Arkansas. Fortunately, a friend whose mother was a prominent artist in Somerset helped Sims to organize a work exchange in the studio of acclaimed artist Mike Dodd. “It was at Mike’s place that the decision to make a life working in clay was cemented,” Sims says, and their acquaintance evolved into a life-long friendship. 

During the final week she worked with him, Dodd and Sims embarked on a road trip around southern England to visit potters like Clive Bowen, Richard Batterham, Svend Bayer, and Nic Collins. “The conversations I had with them and to witness up close how they lived their lives—from kitchen to garden to studio—stood out to me as the only way I felt I could live my own life: integrating all things that mattered; keeping it small and authentic,” Sims says. “It was the life and attitude of the English folk potter that I desired and still reference when thinking about my dedication to working in the medium of ceramics, even though my work has changed very much since those days.” 

Historical Moments in Time 

Now based in Minneapolis, where she remained after pursuing her MFA, Sims continues to channel English ceramics traditions in the studio, especially the aesthetics and cultural shifts associated with the Industrial Revolution. In 2015, she received a travel grant to visit numerous renowned Staffordshire potteries, so along with her partner and 11-month-old son, she traveled to historic factories predominantly in Stoke-on-Trent and Burslem. 

Staffordshire potteries pioneered an array of materials and techniques, from bone china and jasperware to transfer printing, glazing, and decorating methods. Staffordshire figures, which originated in the mid-18th century, historically comprised a bisque body that was glazed and fired, or as the process advanced in complexity in later periods of manufacture, coated in lead glaze, fired, colored, fired, gilded, and fired again. 

Early factory-produced examples caught the Sims’ attention in particular because the discordance of the hand and machine is evident in both the process and the addition of systematized date stamps. Colored glazes were applied by hand, but the forms were factory produced and the name of the company was typically imprinted on the bottom. “It’s like a small hiccup in the history of production pottery that no one really comments on or cares about, but for me, it is a fascinating moment,” the artist says. “It’s like a visual recording of the moment machine labor became more valuable than human labor.” 

Sims visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which holds pattern books by prominent potteries in its collection, like a sketchbook of hand-drawn designs pasted into a ledger by Leeds-based manufacturer Messrs. Hartley, Greens & Co. “The manuscripts were the potters’ records of notes, kiln firings, and surface definition,” the artist says, brought to tears by the evidence of many hands having flipped through the pages. 

Sims stresses how ceramics’ ability to reflect who we are at any given time in history is inherent to her fascination with the medium. “I loved this clash of aesthetic, and I felt that visually it represented what capitalism had become,” she says. “I was inspired to explore this moment by using some of the motifs and forms on typical industrial Staffordshire pottery, giving voice to the haunted past, the dissolution of life and culture involving art and handicraft in favor of a material culture that seeks to remove that enjoyment from our lives.” 

Tying Together Narratives 

Drawing on motifs and palettes of 19th-century figurines, serveware, and home accents, Sims throws mugs, pitchers, plates, and trays that she then glazes in vibrant hues. She clarifies that her work is not about so-called “women’s work” or domesticity, although, “There is no denying that those topics have a seat at the table for the discussion,” the artist says. “But it’s more about creating a situation where I can visually and metaphorically tie together personal narratives—a record of my exercises with the medium and moments in history, particularly relating to human folly.” 

Sims’ pieces conjure motifs and aesthetics redolent of the transition from the early modern to the modern era, marked by sweeping transformations in manufacturing. In contrast, the purposefully “imperfect” quality of her vessels speaks to the timeless traditions of handbuilt pottery that preceded the machine age, emphasizing the role of the body in hand-sculpted mug handles, irregular surfaces, and brushy glaze that appear as if an image, perhaps a figure or a scene, has collapsed into an enigmatic and abstract jumble of hues. Suggestions of ornamental framing transform into minimal color fields on vessels that are at once sculptural, functional, and painterly. 

As Sims’ work evolves, her research into the 20th-century ethos and aesthetics of movements like the Bauhaus, de Stijl, and the Memphis Group continue to inform her approach, reveling in the blurred boundaries between form and function, concept and utility. The artist was recently awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome for 2025–2026, which includes a five-month residency in the city centered around new research. 

“Over many years, I have become comfortable enough with the material that I don’t doubt the marks I make anymore, but I know better than to trust it completely,” Sims says. “I know that my work has changed without any intention of changing it, and this is just the mechanics and memory of the body over time. I love how clay records that. It’s romantic and mysterious, and I think it’s very unique to the medium.” 

the author Kate Mothes is an independent writer and art curator based in Northeast Wisconsin. She is the founder of Young Space, a platform for contemporary art. Her writing has appeared in Selvedge Magazine, Arts Midwest’s Creativity News Desk, and regularly on Colossal in her role as editor. 

June/July/August 2025: Table of Contents

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