With a focus on creating pottery that become companions for daily use, Suze Lindsay (Bakersville, NC) crafts altered forms to entice the user to take pleasure in everyday activities while inviting participation and promoting hospitality. Lindsay creates vessels that suggest figure and character through manipulation after they have been thrown. Her pots continue to take form as Lindsay adds handbuilt elements that are added to the thrown parts to give each pot a personality of its own. Experimentation and play, particularly with form and proportion, are at the heart of Lindsay’s functional practice. Lindsay also pays particular attention to the surface decoration of her work. She enhances her pottery through the use of patterns created with painted slips and glazes, with everything being completed in the salt kiln. Her mark making is focused on enhancing the volume of her pots.
Lindsay’s entrance to the world of craft started in New Orleans when she was working as a teacher in the public school system after completing a degree in special education at Penn State and receiving a Montessori teaching certificate. She began her journey as a hobby potter, taking classes at a rec center one day a week, inspired by a potter at a local craft show. She was encouraged to take a summer workshop at Penland School of Craft, where she eventually became a CORE fellow from 1987 to 1989. Her time at Penland was followed by an MFA from Louisiana State University. Lindsay, along with her partner Kent, went on to form Fork Mountain Pottery where Lindsay continues her practice as a studio potter to this day.
Lindsay’s awards include Best of Show in the First Annual Strictly Functional Pottery National, and Emerging Artist at the 2000 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Art conference, and demonstrating artist for 2021 National Council on Education for Ceramic Art conference, along with a long string of Artist in Residence titles at many notable ceramic institutions around the country. Her work is in the permanent collections of George E. Ohr Museum in Biloxi MS; Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX; Islip Art Museum, NY; Kennedy Museum of American Art, Athens OH; Greenwich House Pottery, NY; Lancaster Museum of Art, East Petersburg, PA; Rocky Mount Arts Center, Raleigh, NC, and the North Carolina Potter Center, Seagrove, NC, and with numerous private collectors.
Lindsay’s solo exhibitions include exhibitions at Manchester Craftsman’s Guild in Pittsburgh PA, North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove NC, Roswell Art Center in Atlanta, GA, 18 Hands Gallery in Houston TX, and AKAR Gallery in Iowa City.