SEPTEMBER 13 – OCTOBER 9
Sales Gallery & Online
Jil Franke, Lisa Orr, Katie Bosley Sabin, Beth Thompson
Jil Franke, Lisa Orr, Katie Bosley Sabin, Beth Thompson
Jil Franke
St. Paul, MN
Jil Franke was introduced to ceramics when teaching art in Sydney, Australia. She handbuilds each geometrically designed functional piece of work using a darting technique on slabs. Surface decoration is created using wax resist and slips and finally they are fired in a wood kiln with a light salting. Her work has been exhibited both internationally and nationally, including Yingge Ceramics Museum (Taipei) and Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Center(China). Private collections with her work include The American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA) and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Lisa Orr
Northborough, MA
Lisa Orr completed an MFA at The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1992. She has been awarded a Fulbright and National Endowment for the Arts fellowship through Mid-America Arts Alliance. Orr taught high school ceramics in Austin, Texas, and travels extensively for lectures and workshops. She creates low-fire pottery intended for use in everyday life. Though rooted in the deep history of ceramics, her forms are fluid and often gently asymmetrical—a combination of the clay’s natural expression and her own inspiration in the moment. Her slip work and relief decorations along with her rich colors suggest images of sky, coral reef, or flowers in bloom. The work is a riot of color, energy, memories, and emotion, all of which come together to create finished work that is cohesive and confident.
Katie Bosley Sabin
Brookline, MA
Katie Bosley Sabin is originally from Clearwater, Florida and is currently the Artist-in-Residence at Mudflat Studio in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned her MFA in ceramics from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and her BFA from the University of Florida (Gainesville). Bosley Sabin has been a summer resident at the Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, MT) and a Fogelberg Studio Fellow at Northern Clay Center. She combines dynamic forms and dimensional surfaces to create porcelain vessels that are striking at first glance and reward further inspection. Constructed with an emphasis on symmetry and structure, the works challenge conventional interpretations of the vessel and promote a sense of awe.
Beth Thompson
Minneapolis, MN Beth Thompson studied ceramic sculpture at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she began to sculpt realistic, life-sized dogs out of clay. Animals are her visual language, and through capturing them in moments of expression and connection she explores human emotions, intimacy and inner dialogues without the barriers of discourse surrounding human figurative work. Thompson emphasizes the power of tapping into vulnerability and quiet states of feeling through the interactions between figures in her work. Her sculpting process includes sketching from life, photo collection, and studying video to learn about the anatomy, musculature, kinesiology and gesture of her subjects. She then makes small scale models to find poses and form before moving on to sculpting the final work from a solid piece of clay on armatures. After sculpting, Thompson lets the clay begin hardening before cutting it into sections, hollowing it out, and reassembling.