North Carolina Potters Conference, Asheboro, NC

North Carolina Potters Conference, Randolph Arts Guild, Asheboro, North Carolina

The North Carolina Potters Conference is on March 7-9, 2014. This year's line-up will definitely be a treat!  Up on stage demonstrating their work will be John Gill, Mark Shapiro, and Michelle Erickson. Our presentation talks this year will be Robert Hunter, Bill Carty, Brian Jones and Ben Carter.

You can register online at the Randolph Arts Guild website.  The cost is $225.00 for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning. (Includes Lunch and Dinner on Friday and Saturday and Lunch on Sunday.  Participants are responsible for securing their own accommodations.)  The Randolph Arts Guild is located in downtown Asheboro (center of the state) and around 15 miles north of Seagrove, where Bruce and I have our pottery studio.


The information below has been extracted from the Randolph Arts Guild website.

John Gill, Alfred, New York

John Gill, Alfred, New York

“In my work I try to utilize simple techniques. This allows for freedom of ideas and process. Shape, form, use and color inform and question other possibilities. My work uses shape and form to inflate color. Working within the realm of function expands the potential. History of ceramics, painting and sculpture collide. Clay has a simple directness – it prints beautifully.”

John Gill is professor of ceramic art in the School of Art & Design at Alfred University and has been a member of the faculty since 1984. Gill received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute, in 1973, and his MFA in 1975 from Alfred University’s acclaimed masters program in ceramic art.

John Gill is internationally recognized as an artist and teacher. Gill is the recipient of numerous awards, grants and fellowships, and is frequently invited to deliver lectures and workshops.  In 2009 Gill received the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and is a member of the Council of the International Academy of Ceramics. He travels and lectures throughout the US, Canada and China and is currently working closely with international artists in an effort to revitalize Chinese ceramic art.

Mark Shapiro, Worthington, Massachusetts

Mark Shapiro, Worthington, Massachusetts

“Where will my pots end up? In the landfills with the busted bikes and lawnmowers and all the other cheaply made or quickly obsolete techno-junk—in the giant middens of our endless desires? No matter. I am glad to leave a record of my own touch in this most receptive, fragile, and enduring material. Clay’s low material intrinsic value and fragility, paradoxically, make it endure as one of the most compelling records of the human touch on the earth. The bottom of the ovoid jug is marked by the potter’s two-hundred-year-old fingerprints, just as the earth’s strata are uniquely marked in clay fragments by all the peoples who struggled here to endure.”

Mark Shapiro makes wood-fired pots in Western Massachusetts. He has been exhibiting his work across the country for over thirty years.

His educational path ventured through New Lincoln and Woodstock Country schools, Amherst College, and later at Penland and Haystack.

He is a frequent lecturer, curator, panelist, and writer, and is mentor to a half-dozen apprentices who have trained at his Stonepool Pottery. He has led workshops around the world including Centro Curaumilla, Chile, and Anderson Ranch, Jamaica, West Indies.

His interviews of Karen Karnes, Michael Simon, Paulus Berensohn, and Sergei Isupov, are in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and he recently edited A Chosen Path: the Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes (UNC Press). He is on the advisory board of Ceramics Monthly, and is a contributing editor to Studio Potter Magazine.

Michelle Erickson, Yorktown, Virginia

Michelle Erickson, Yorktown, Virginia

“It is the unique inheritance of the ceramic medium that records our most ancient past, and is simultaneously indispensable to advancements of space travel, weapons manufacture, ballistic armor and even what is yet to be conceived.  This legacy drives my expanding exploration of art in clay. Clay used in all cultures in every conceivable manner, fulfilling our basic needs and demonstrating our highest aspirations, is a truly democratic material.

Michelle Erickson has a B.F.A. from The College of William and Mary.  Her considerable contemporary ceramic works are featured in numerous publications and in the collections of major museums in the US and UK including collections of the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, The New York Historical Society, and Yale University Museum to name a few.

Her mastery of 17th and 18th century ceramic techniques are published in several editions of the journal Ceramics In America. She has lectured and demonstrated her work widely for scholarly groups and institutions in both the US and UK. In 2007 she was commissioned to create the official gift presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll to commemorate her historic visit to Jamestown.

As artist in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2012 Erickson produced 3 films presented at Ceramic Arts London 2013 and International Ceramics festival UK.

There she also developed a concept she calls the Potter’s Field; exploring ceramic life cycles of form, function, fashion and design as the perishable body that leaves behind the bones of world ceramics – that is – the history of us.

Robert Hunter, Yorktown, Virginia

Robert Hunter, Yorktown, Virginia

Robert Hunter has over thirty years of professional experience in prehistoric and historical archaeology. He has a MA in Anthropology from the College of William and Mary and additional coursework at the doctoral level in American Studies. He was the founding director of the Center for Archaeological Research at The College of William and Mary. Hunter served as assistant curator of Ceramics and Glass in the Department of Collections at Colonial Williamsburg. He is a partner in the business PERIOD DESIGNS, an innovative firm specializing in the reproduction of 17th- and 18th-century decorative arts.

Since 2001, Robert has been editor of the annual journal, Ceramics in America, published by the Chipstone Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hunter lectures widely and participates in the New York Ceramics Fair in January each year. He has written for a variety of publications including The Catalogue of Antiques & Fine Art, New England Antiques Journal, Early American Life, Ceramic Review, Studio Potter, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Pottery Making Illustrated, Kerameiki Techni, and the Journal of Archaeological Science.

He received the 2007 Award of Merit from the Society for Historical Archaeology and is an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Bill Carty, Alfred, New York

Bill Carty, Alfred, New York

William M. Carty is Professor and Chair of Ceramic Engineering at the Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology at Alfred University. He is highly-recognized for his cutting edge research on chemical interactions happening inside ceramics and his work on improving the efficiency of ceramics production. Bill’s research focuses on traditional and advanced ceramic processing of colloidal and nanoscale powders, the connection of processing to phase evolution, and microstructure, grain boundary tailoring, and physical properties of sintered ceramics.  His work in ceramic processing has resulted in significant improvements in the understanding of ceramic forming operations and defect elimination, microstructure control, and dramatic efficiencies in commercial glass melting.  In recent years his focus has extended to research to address non-aqueous ceramic processing and developed rules that describe metastable grain boundary chemistry.

Needless to say Bill Carty approaches the world of ceramics from a whole different perspective than most studio potters. Bill has both B.S. and M.S. in Ceramic Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Washington, 1992.  The results of his research have been published in several journals and he holds numerous patents for his discoveries.

Ben Carter, Santa Cruz, California

Ben Carter, Santa Cruz, California

“Living in a country with a storied ceramic tradition opened my eyes to age-old techniques and cultural practices. The combination of my frequent trips to China’s many ceramic museums, my dedicated group of students in Shanghai, and my interactions with Chinese coworkers taught me new ways of thinking and making on a daily basis.”

Benjamin Carter’s passion for clay has been constant since he first sat at a potter’s wheel in his high school ceramics class. After the first week he naively/proudly declared that he would become an artist. This decision led him to Appalachian State University for a BFA in painting/ceramics and then on to a MFA in ceramics at the University of Florida.

Ben now actively lectures and exhibits his work across the country.  He has completed residencies at The Odyssey Center for Ceramic Art, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the Archie Bray Foundation, and the Danish Ceramic Research Center at Guldagergaard.

In 2010 Carter moved to Shanghai, China to be the educational director of the Pottery Workshop in Shanghai.

Ben recently moved to Santa Cruz, CA to set up a studio. In addition to making and exhibiting pots, Ben is known for the “Tales of a Red Clay Rambler” podcast which features interviews with “culture makers from around the world.”

Brian Jones, Portland, Oregon

Brian Jones, Portland, Oregon

“My current work lies in my interest in the investigation of the transformative character of memories. A remembrance of a time, place, or day serves as the point of departure for contemplation of form, color, and tone. The nature of how the finished work reveals itself over time to an audience is the long echo of that initial reverie. My work is both a reservoir and an initiator of memories.”

Brian R. Jones grew up in Syracuse, NY, and is now an artist living and working in Portland, OR. He holds degrees from The New York State College of Ceramics (BFA) and Southern Methodist University (MFA). Brian actively exhibits his work across the nation, including a recent solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR.  He has taught in various capacities and has completed artist residencies at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME, and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA.  He presented at Utilitarian Clay VI: Celebrate the Object at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in September 2012, and in 2013, Jones was selected as an Emerging Artist by the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts.

In addition to his merits as a potter, Brian has created a notable following for his podcast the Brian R. Jonescast.  These monthly episodes focus on conversations between artists and, while having a bent towards the ceramics world, possess an appeal universal to any one in a creative field.