Kathryn O'Neill - Potter

Kathryn O'Neill - Potter

Presented by Wesleyan Potters

“Let’s take a pottery class!” Those fateful words were spoken by my close friend Anne almost twenty years ago. Together, we signed up for a class at the Greenville Art Museum in South Carolina. A couple of weeks later we were both amazed and dismayed at how difficult it was to make something on the wheel that didn’t resemble a melted ashtray, and how horrifyingly easy it was to destroy that ashtray by over-trimming it, exploding it in the bisque firing, or glazing it in some unpleasant combination of colors. But we persevered through the class, and eventually graduated to making actual ashtrays, pencil holders, and (on a good day) mugs. Once I started working with clay, I never looked back. This is my third year as a member at Wesleyan Potters. I make primarily functional items. I want people to touch my pottery; to drink coffee from my mugs, serve salad from my bowls, light candles in my votive holders. I’m inspired by natural colors, patterns, and forms; the tracery of frost on a window, the lace of a dragonfly wing, the shapes of leaves.

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