OCTOBER 10 – NOVEMBER 5
Sales Gallery & Online
Maggie Jaszczak, Lee Love, Monica Rudquist, Sandra Daulton Shaughnessy
Jewelry Spotlight: Isabel Souza
Maggie Jaszczak, Lee Love, Monica Rudquist, Sandra Daulton Shaughnessy
Jewelry Spotlight: Isabel Souza
Our Late Autumn Featured Artists’ works feature unique surface texture and decoration. Jaszczak creates handbuilt and wheel-thrown earthenware pieces, decorated patterns of layered slips and terra sigillata, dragged grog, and finger marks, pulled from her long-time love of textiles. Love’s goal is to “make pottery for everyday use that allow users to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, take a breath, and observe the natural beauty that surrounds them.” Rudquist’s work “explores the space between function and sculpture”. Her functional pieces are often cut up and reassembled to disrupt the sense of volume. Shaughnessy creates ceremoniously functional works, often using clay slips, resists, and lively brushwork to create active surfaces. This month, we introduce new sales gallery jewelry artist Isabel Souza. Souza’s hope is that her vibrant jewelry sparks as much joy for the users as the creative process kindles for her.
About the Artists
Maggie Jaszczak
Shafer, MN
Maggie Jaszczak is a potter and mixed-media artist originally from Ontario, Canada. She completed her undergraduate studies at Kootenay School of Arts (Nelson, British Columbia), and at Alberta College of Art + Design (Calgary), and earned her MFA in ceramics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Jaszczak has participated in ceramic residency programs at the New Taipei Ceramics Museum (Taiwan), the Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, Montana), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass, Colorado), and Medalta Potteries (Medicine Hat, Alberta). After a three-year residency at Penland School of Crafts (North Carolina), she and her husband moved to Minnesota where they work as studio artists.
Lee Love
Minneapolis, MN
“I make and use handmade functional pottery as an antidote to the modern tendency toward the use of things made by machine, things made without heart or beauty, for the mere goal of profit. What makes human beings unique? Not our ability to make things—insects can do this; nor our ability to reason—in the near future, machines will be able to do this. What makes human beings unique is our ability to recognize and cherish beauty. My goal is to make things for everyday use that allow users to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, take a breath, and observe the natural beauty that surrounds them.”
Monica Rudquist
Minneapolis, MN
Monica Rudquist fell in love with clay and the wheel at age twelve. She counts herself lucky to have had many mentors along the way including Ron Gallas, Jun Kaneko, Gail Kristensen, Mike Norman, and Judy Onofrio. Rudquist received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI) and her BA at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). She has been a part of NCC since its beginnings and is currently co-president of Minnesota Women’s Ceramic Artists (MMWCA). She teaches at St. Catherine University (St. Paul, MN).
Her porcelain pieces explore the space between function and sculpture. Rudquist’s work has been included in group and solo exhibitions throughout the country—notably, including a 40-foot wall installation made from over 1,000 pieces of wheel-thrown porcelain at the headquarters of LifeSource (Minneapolis, MN).
Sandra Daulton Shaughnessy
St. Louis Park, MN
Sandra Daulton Shaughnessy received a BFA from the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls), and an MFA from Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti). Shaughnessy creates ceremoniously functional wheel thrown and hand-built pottery. She often uses clay slips and lively brushwork to create active surfaces. Shaughnessy currently works out of her studio in St. Louis Park and the Clayhouse Pottery (Ottertail, Minnesota).
Jewelry Spotlight: Isabel Souza
Truro, MA
Isabel Souza is a ceramic artist and teacher based in Truro, Massachusetts. Souza graduated with a BFA from Syracuse University (New York) in 2019. She pursued several mediums including ceramics, textile design, silkscreen, and fashion photography. During a semester abroad in Florence, Italy, Souza cultivated new ideas around craftsmanship, art, and fashion that she would use to inform her own work. After graduating, she returned to her hometown on Cape Cod to pursue her dream of establishing a ceramics business. Souza’s goal as a ceramic artist is to create functional handmade objects that hold stories and add meaning to our surroundings. Her designs aim to feel personal in how they interact with the human body—whether it is a mug that we hold to our lips and cradle in our hands for warmth, a serving bowl that is passed between loved ones at a dinner table, or a pair of vibrant earrings that we thread through our ears on special occasions.