July 29 – August 31, 2025
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Andy Bissonnette, Sarah Chenoweth Davis, Gruchalla Rosetti Pottery, Ani Kasten, Tricia Schmidt
Andy Bissonnette, Sarah Chenoweth Davis, Gruchalla Rosetti Pottery, Ani Kasten, Tricia Schmidt
About the Artists
Andy Bissonnette
Lincoln, NE
Andy Bissonnette, a recent MFA graduate from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, is a potter and educator currently residing in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is acutely interested in the union of form, surface, utility, and the relationship between clay body and glaze. He is interested in historical uses of pottery, both narrative and utilitarian, and often looks to the past when conceiving his work. His influences are far and many, ranging from Northern Song Dynasty Celadons to the form language developed by the ancient Greeks, to the modernist aesthetic of the Bauhaus in Germany.
Prior to graduate school, Bissonnette spent over a decade as a designer in the Minneapolis advertising community where he developed and nourished his penchant for subtle details. He crafts his pots with this same care and rigor which can be seen in his precisely fitting lids, carefully sculpted handles, and elegant vessel forms.
Sarah Chenoweth Davis
Philadelphia, PA
Sarah Chenoweth Davis, a porcelain and pastry addict, grew up in the Midwest and earned a BA in Biology from the College of Wooster (Ohio) and an MFA in Applied Craft and Design from the Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland) and the Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland). Chenoweth Davis’ work has been exhibited throughout the US and Japan and has been featured in various publications including Ceramics Monthly, The Journal of Australian Ceramics, and the interactive e-book American i-Pottery. Community-focused, Chenoweth Davis is a past President of the Oregon Potters Association, served as an on-site coordinator for the 51st annual NCECA conference, and wrangled potters as a Coordinator for Gather:Make:Shelter, an ongoing city-wide collaboration between housed and unhoused artists of Portland, OR. Previously, she managed Eutectic Gallery in Portland. She now serves as Retail Coordinator at The Clay Studio and teaches at Perkins Center for the Arts in New Jersey. Chenoweth Davis maintains a home studio with her husband Brian, a musician, and serves as the drummer and backup vocalist for a variety of his projects.
Gruchalla Rosetti Pottery
Duluth, MN
Richard Gruchalla and Carrin Rosetti are a husband-and-wife collaborative team making wheel-thrown and handbuilt Raku-fired pottery. They each bring separate skills to their finished work. Gruchalla is an accomplished clay worker with over 50 years of experience as a professional potter. Rosetti is a trained fiber artist. Over 30 years ago, she brought her vision as a colorist and her exceptional skill in the presentation of fine detail to the clay studio. Both artists contribute to the completion of almost every piece they produce. Gruchalla is responsible for the wet-working of the pottery; wheel throwing, slab construction, burnishing, or the addition of extra texture and carving. He also does the actual firing of the pieces in the Raku kiln. Rosetti takes care of the detailed glazing of the carved surfaces and collaborates with Gruchalla on forms, glazes, studio output, and marketing. Pieces are sometimes passed back and forth several times before they are completed. Final embellishments include the addition of copper wire, metallic leaf, and small wooden pegs. Their pieces are intended to be decorative objects rather than functional because they are softer than stoneware, thus more fragile. They are food-safe, but not necessarily watertight.
Ani Kasten
Shafer, MN
Investigating the materiality of the clay is the foundation for all of Ani Kasten’s sculptural vessels. She writes, “These sculptural groupings explore the meeting point between natural and man-made worlds. The vessels take their influence from plants, water, rocks and clay, as well as from architecture, industry, and machinery…they investigate the nature of change, the compiling of memory, and a feeling of profound loss—the recognition of temporal beauty bound inextricably with grief.” Since completing her ceramic training in the UK in 2001, Kasten has developed a unique studio practice in which she draws from her extensive travel experiences. Her training in England, as well as the five years she spent working in Nepal, were a formative influence on Kasten’s ceramics. She is a current host of the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour.
Tricia Schmidt
St. Paul, MN
Tricia Schmidt has had a lifelong love of clay and illustration, and she marries the two in her functional and sculptural work. As a primarily self-taught artist, she embraces an aesthetic that is informed by the joy of doodling on a fresh sheet of paper and the satisfaction of a voluptuously curving form. Schmidt’s animals and figures are often self-referential, but universal enough to appeal to a larger audience through the use of her favorite motifs: ambivalent sloths, playful cats, industrious bunnies, malevolent squirrels, and introspective women. She references folklore in her archetypal red birds, symbolizing those who have passed on but are still watching over us.