Ceramics Monthly Articles (Simple)

Stephanie Galli describes the development of her work and career since being featured as an Emerging Artist in 2017.

Information on submitting work for exhibitions, fairs, and festivals.

These glaze and terra-sigillata recipes from Ruth Easterbrook, Megs LeVesseur, and Taylor Mezo accentuate red clay bodies at low-fire and mid-range temperatures.

The unique surface of Gelli printing plates allows for silk-screened underglaze images to be transfered onto bisque-fired ware. Shawna Pincus shares her process.

When used in small amounts of 0.25–2%, bentonite will have a similar ability to suspend dry ingredients in a glaze as occurs with the use of 10% kaolin. So, which should you use?

Abstraction is central to my practice. The pieces I make result from abstracting marks, textures, surfaces, and forms that, together, create a new interpretation of things I see and experience.

Whether it is pigeons paired with bananas or poodles with beach balls, I try to approach all of this in a humorous, even childlike way. In the end, the goal is to create objects that bring joy and lightheartedness to everyday life.

I contribute to this as a maker and as an educator. I’ve spent the last nine years teaching ceramics at various art centers and institutions and value education as a powerful tool to shape our culture.

Makers have the opportunity to help heal, however, by manifesting ideas and emotions into the world through physical objects that transcend time, culture, and language.

I am always looking at the physical beauty and interesting forms and textures in the natural world: plants, animals, humans, cellular life, and inanimate objects.

The forms and surfaces draw upon ceramic archetypes such as the neoclassical wares of Josiah Wedgwood and other prevalent manufacturers of sprigged ware in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Color brings energy to ideas of play and joy, both in historical and contemporary use. Spanning generations of evolution, bright hues have reliably predicted nourishment, becoming intertwined with joy.

In college, I was never a very good painter, but loved the combination of color and texture from thick layers of paint. So, I approach my glaze decoration process like a painter, using glazes instead of paint.

My process starts with automatic drawing. I pick up a pen and let whatever might come out emerge onto my page.

I use the personification of animals to soften the awkwardness and vulnerability of human interactions. I think about how instincts drive animal behavior, while our instincts as humans are clouded by insecurity, guilt, shame, and embarrassment.

I like to leave hints of the pot’s history and how it was made. By utilizing the water-etching method, I curate and abstract the surface information and process marks into historically-based status imagery and patterns.

My practice involves continuous making, and each piece becomes a multi-headed hydra of potential options for each subsequent piece. So, one issue tends to be in synthesis and deciding when and where to impose limitations.

Keep being authentic and making work you enjoy. The more you practice, the better the work will be. The discipline of showing up leads to more practice and new discoveries within the small things that inform the work.

I like to think of what I do as sewing with clay. The thin slabs of clay are the fabric, which I cut into threads to build structures full of seams, very much like a seamstress working at her mannequin.

I pull inspiration from things within domestic spaces such as old wallpaper, textiles, and smaller details that are often overlooked—like a worn seam on an ottoman. Things such as this stir up memories from a simpler time in my life.