The Clay Studio offices, galleries, open studio, and school will be closed on Friday, July 4, 2025, in honor of the Independence Day Holiday.
Doug Herren
After spending several years honing my craft at making pottery, I took a more sculptural stance towards my working processes when I went to graduate school. I spent three years working on my MFA, and had ample opportunity to experiment. I relied heavily on using the potters wheel to generate all the forms I used for my work. The result of this was to impart a strong industrial flavor to the pottery forms I made. Twisted plumbing and gears came to supplant the softer curves normally relied on in traditional pottery. Now everything looked more roughly welded and soldered to arrive at the darker ware I would glaze with equally rough and dry textures.
It was actually a lot of fun…but that did not quite come through in the finished work. It was not until later on that I gave up on relying on glazing altogether, and used sign-painters enamel paints, to markedly brighten my color palette. Today this same industrial aesthetic still dominates, but with a bright festoon of colors that makes one recall children’s playground equipment.
50% of your purchase directly supports the artist, and 50% of
your purchase supports the operations of The Clay Studio, a nonprofit that serves 35,000 people,
including 2,000 underserved school children, each year.
