Curated Exhibit with 2020 Featured Artist and Guest Curator Silvie Granatelli
Each year the Gallery Committee, Board of Directors and Staff Members at Floyd Center for the Arts invites an area artist to serve as our Featured Artist and Guest Curator. We do this to honor the work they have created over the years and to educate the community about their chosen mediums. This year Floyd potter Silvie Granatelli has agreed to be our Featured Artist and Guest Curator. She has curated an exhibition featuring 6 potters whose work she has collected over the years, displayed alongside several pieces of her own, as well. Most of the works in this exhibition are part of Silvie’s private collection, but each artist has also included some of their more recent works available for sale. We are so grateful to Silvie for lending us her time, talents and personal collection of pottery.
In addition to Silvie Granatelli, the following talented potters have work on display during the show:
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Nick Joerling
Suze Lindsay
Kent McLaughlin
Ron Meyers
Mark Shapiro
Sam Taylor
"Many potters collect the work of other potters. After a lifetime of collecting, I have selected these works to illustrate my interest and passion for pottery. The potters I have included in the show are diverse. Their individual voices are resounding. This selection of pots may be new to some of you, and I hope stimulating."
— Silvie Granatelli
Get to Know the 2020 Featured Artist, Silvie Granatelli
"Making pottery is about giving and receiving. As the pot gives and receives simultaneously it becomes an act of hospitality. I hope the objects I make will fulfill the emotive need to delight in the things we see and touch, whatever their everyday use. I try to give pleasure by making functional objects. Through repetitions that are imperceptible but real variations, I hope my work will endure, and hence survive the fashionable object.
I use porcelain clay. Most of it is wheel thrown and altered. While some pieces have figurative elements, all of my work is glazed and decorated to enhance visual and tactile contrasts. I fire my pots in a gas kiln to cone ten."
— Silvie Granatelli
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Silvie Granatelli has been a full time studio potter working in Floyd Co. Virginia since 1982. Silvie received a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1971 and an M.F.A. from Montana State in Bozeman, Montana in 1975. She has taught ceramics at Virginia Tech and Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.
Her work is in the collection of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, The Museum of Ceramic Art in Alfred, New York and the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. Silvie’s work has been featured in many publications, including Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, and Studio Potter. Her work can also be found in numerous books. These include Pots in the Kitchen, by Josie Walter; The Ceramic Glaze Handbook, by Mark Burleson; Handbuilt Tableware, by Kathy Triplett; Porcelain Masters: Major works by Leading Ceramists, curated by Richard Burkett and The Art of Contemporary American Pottery, by Kevin Hluch. She was the recipient of the Virginia Museum Fellowship Grant in 1995.
Throughout her career, Silvie has given workshops across the United States, spoken on panels and demonstrated at several NCECA conferences. In 2000, she presented a slide lecture in New Delhi, India. She also participated in a ceramic symposium and show in Izmir, Turkey in 2000. Silvie traveled to Tuscany, Italy in 2005. There she teamed up with an Italian chef to teach a workshop on the cuisine and pottery of Tuscany. Silvie’s work has been shown numerous times at the Old Church Cultural Center in Demarest, NJ. She has been an ongoing invited artist at the St. Croux River Valley Pottery Tour in MN.
Silvie was a previous owner of a regional gallery called Troika Contemporary Crafts. It is located in Floyd Virginia, where she lives and works. She has shared her studio and mentored young aspiring potters for twenty some odd years.
Meet the Featured Potters
Nick Joerling
Artist's Statement
"It’s nice, 35 years in, to find myself today as eager to be in the studio as when I first began, and to recognize that the things that come from a studio life--security and risk, independence and community, mental and physical engagement--continue to be challenging and
meaningful.”
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About the Artist
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Nick Joerling is a full-time studio potter who has maintained a studio in Penland, North Carolina since the mid-1980’s. He received a B.A. in History from the University of Dayton, Ohio, and an M.F.A. in Ceramics from Louisiana State University in 1986. He has taught in craft programs in the United States and abroad, been widely reviewed and exhibited, and is represented in public and private collections.
Suze Lindsay
Artist's Statement
"I focus on creating altered pottery forms that are good companions for daily use. An integral part of my work includes surface decoration to enhance pottery form by patterning and painting slips and glazes for salt firing. I make things to entice the user to take pleasure in everyday activities, inviting participation, promoting hospitality.
When I make pots, I subtly suggest figure and character by manipulating forms after they are thrown. I roll out clay slabs and use them to hand build elements that are then assembled with thrown parts to create pieces that have a personality of their own. I like to experiment and play with form and proportion on functional ware by altering and stacking parts. When I decorate the surfaces with slips and glazes, I am very interested in making the marks and designs enhance the volume of each pot. I am inspired when I see historical pots from many cultures, including Japan, Crete, Chile, China, and native North American. The pots I respond to may be a quirky Pre-Columbian animal ewer, or the sophisticated designs of a Mimbres bowl.”
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About the Artist
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Suze’s formal ceramic studies started with a 2 year CORE fellowship at Penland School of Craft, followed by earning an MFA at Louisiana State University. She then returned to Penland School of Craft as a long term artist in residence. After completing those 3 years in residence, her goals focused on creating life as a full time studio potter, setting up her studio in Penland’s rich craft community. Working with stoneware clay, Lindsay subtly suggests figure and character by manipulating forms after they are thrown. An integral part of her work includes surface decoration to enhance her pottery forms by patterning and painting slips and glazes for salt firing. Her mark making is strongly influenced by studying historical ceramics from cultures in Japan, Crete, Chile, China, and Native North American. Lindsay has said, “I make things to entice the user to take pleasure in everyday activities, inviting participation, promoting hospitality.” Currently, she owns and operates Fork Mountain Pottery with her husband and fellow potter, Kent McLaughlin. They live and work in the mountains of western North Carolina.
Kent McLaughlin
Ron Meyers
About the Artist
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Ron Meyers holds a 1967 M.F.A. degree in ceramics from the School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, and B.S. (1956) and M.S. (1961) degrees in art education from State University of New York College at Buffalo. He taught at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC from 1967-1972. He then spent the next 20 years teaching at the University of Georgia in Athens where he retired as Professor Emeritus.
Ron has an extensive history of professional activities within the ceramics community. He has presented numerous workshops and demonstrations in the United States and abroad, most recently at the Lill Street Studio in Chicago, Il, Arrowmont School of Crafts, the Huntington Museum of Art, University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Curaumilla Clay Studio in Chile.
Recent exhibitions include a one-person exhibit, Huntington Museum of Art, Hungtinton, WV; “Six South Carolina Innovators in Clay”, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; Regis Mas ter Exhibit, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN; Trace Gallery, Athens, GA; AKAR Gallery, Iowa City, IA; 45 year Retrospective “The Usual Suspects”, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; “A Potter’s Menagerie”, Mason Scharfenstein Museum of Art, Piedmont College, Demor est, GA.
His works are in the collections of the Wiseman Museum of Art, Minneapolis of Art, Minneapolis, MN; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; the Racine Museum of Art, Racine, WI; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; and the Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC.
He was the recipient of the National Council for the Education of Ceramic Arts Excellence in Teaching Award and the Northern Clay Center’s 2008 Regis Masters Award which honors senior artists who have had a major impact on the development of 20th and 21st ceramics in the United States.
Mark Shapiro
Artist's Statement
"The town is sacked. Silver and gold, even bronze, are beaten into crude billets to be hauled off and melted. Houses burned, prisoners taken, or not. And in the wreckage: bones, stones, and pot-sherds.
Clay’s low material intrinsic value and fragility, paradoxically, make it endure as one of the most compelling records of the human touch on the earth. The bottom of the ovoid jug is marked by the potter’s two-hundred-year-old fingerprints, just as the earth’s strata are uniquely marked in clay fragments by all the peoples who struggled here to endure.
Where will my pots end up? In the landfills with the busted bikes and lawnmowers and all the other cheaply made or quickly obsolete techno-junk—in the giant middens of our endless desires? No matter. I am glad to leave a record of my own touch in this most receptive, fragile, and enduring material.”
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About the Artist
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Mark Shapiro is a potter in Western Massachusetts. He is a frequent workshop leader, lecturer, curator, panelist, and writer, and is mentor to more than half a dozen apprentices who have trained at his Stonepool Pottery. His work is in many public collections, including the Smithsonian, Mint, Newark, Everson museums and the Chipstone Foundation. His work was featured in the World Ceramics Biennial in Icheon, Korea. His interviews of Karen Karnes, Michael Simon, Paulus Berensohn, and Sergei Isupov are in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and he edited A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes (UNC Press 2010). He is on the advisory board of Ceramics Monthly and is a contributing editor to Studio Potter magazine. He is a founding member of POW! (Pots on Wheels!) and heads up the Apprenticelines Project, which seeks to promote and expand apprenticeship. In 2018–19 he was a Smithsonian Artist Residency Fellow studying the Remensnyder Collection at the National Museum of American History. Mark has sought to bridge the gap between contemporary studio potters and historical researchers, collectors, curators, and collectors.
Artist's Statement
"Almost all the pottery I make is based on utility. Hopefully my pots are approachable, accessible and affordable and will be used daily.
We live in what is considered a temperate rain forest. Summers are green and lush and the winter is fairly mild. The surfaces of my work tend to reflect that in my decorating of the work.
I’m inspired from the act of making. It’s deeply satisfying using my hands to form on the potter’s wheel, extrude components to construct forms and making slab of clay to build objects that would will earn a place in someone’s kitchen cabinets.”
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About the Artist
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Kent McLaughlin is a studio potter who began his training in 1973 at Brevard Community College, the University of Central Florida, and Penland School of Crafts. He apprenticed with a production potter before opening his own studio in 1985. Since 1996, he has owned and operated his private studio, Fork Mountain Pottery, in Bakersville NC, with his wife, Suze Lindsay.
He makes his living selling his pots, and teaching workshops. Kent has taught nationally and internationally at well known art centers like Penland School of Crafts in Penland NC, Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass CO, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg TN. He has been a visiting instructor at Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in Jingdezhen, China, and at Curaumilla Art Center in Chile.
Sam Taylor
Artist's Statement
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"I got my first piece of pottery from Silvie in the early 90’s. I am pretty sure it was at an American Craft Council show in Baltimore. I was in my 20’s and was attending my first ‘big’ show as potter. I was in the wholesale only part of the show and was wide eyed and wet behind the ears. For the first time I heard myself explaining ‘no these are not raku these are wood fired, yes they are brown but no they don’t turn into wood after they are fired,’ ‘a treadle wheel is...,’ and so on, refrains I still repeat to this day like the chorus of a golden oldie. I was in Baltimore with my buddies Mark Shapiro and Micheal Kline. We were working together building and firing wood kilns at Mark’s Pottery in Western Massachusetts. Mark and Micheal were showing me the ropes. They were in both the wholesale and retail part of the show and they had been making pottery long enough to ‘know people’ or at the very least to know about people. At the top of the short list of potters they said I had to go see, was Silvie. I don’t remember meeting Silvie that day though I must have. I think she was pretty intimidating and I was shy. But I did buy a tea bowl, matt copper glaze, generous size, straight fluted sides, a boosty but not fussy foot and the most gentle, most perfect curve across the bottom of the bowl. I have spent the intervening years taking that pot apart and putting it back together. Not to replicate but to try and understand how to get so many things right all in one piece.
Some years have passed since I got that teabowl and a lot has changed. For one I know a lot more potters, Silvie for one. She is still a little intimidating but I am not as shy. I live in Western Massachusetts with my wife and some of my three boys and fire my own big old wood kiln. Mark lives down the road, Micheal moved to North Carolina years ago. Not changed is the refrain in my own head, the question I ask myself with each pot I make ‘how can I get more right?’"