OUr 2024 Theme: Addition Through Reduction
Both reduction firing and cooling allow potters and ceramic artists to enhance the aesthetics of their pieces. Join us as we explore these phenomena with some wonderful artists.
This year’s conference will primarily continue in the same format of past conferences centering around two days of demonstrating artists in addition to multiple speakers. Three demonstrators will work side-by-side, encouraging questions, and conversing with the audience and each other. Interspersed in the program are speakers who will share their input and insights on the conference’s theme.
2024 Presenters
Demonstrating Artists
Melissa Weiss (Asheville, NC)
Melissa Weiss is a full-time studio potter working and living in Asheville, NC. She has been working with clay since 2005. She makes all her pots from custom stoneware she makes herself utilizing clay she digs from her property in the Arkansas Ozarks. All of her pieces are one of a kind and fired to cone 10 in a gas kiln and reduction cooled with wood. Originally from NYC, she finds inspiration and comfort from her memories of Sunday Sicilian dinners which her grandmother cooked from scratch for dozens of relatives every Sunday without fail. Melissa earned a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 2000. Her education in ceramics was pieced together starting with a con ed class at the local technical school. She took classes at a communal clay studio and attended various craft schools as an assistant, a work-study, and a teacher. Melissa teaches workshops and exhibits her work throughout the country.
Hamish Jackson (Springfield, OR)
Hamish Jackson is an English potter who got his start at Winchcombe Pottery. He completed a four-year apprenticeship with Mark Hewitt in North Carolina, and received his MFA from Utah State University. He has exhibited in England, Japan, Thailand, and the United States. Hamish is currently an artist-in-residence at Pleasant Hill Pottery in Oregon. His main interest is making functional pots from local materials. Hamish enjoys investigating how local rocks, minerals, and clays interact with wood and soda firing. He seeks to connect his art with the places where the materials come from.
Hamish is obsessed with tea and would love to spend an afternoon sampling some with you.
Timothy Sullivan (Marietta, GA)
Timothy Sullivan, the owner of Creekside Pottery, holds a BFA in ceramics and painting from Carnegie-Mellon University (1972) and an MFA in ceramics and sculpture from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (1975). After exploring various art forms and then focusing his energies on a long career in IT, he returned to clay in 1998, embracing it as a full-time potter.
Timothy views himself not as an artist but as a designer craftsman, aiming to contribute a new perspective to the millennia-long conversation. He offers unique pieces on his website and has shared over 200 images of his work since 2002 on Pinterest. The images on Pinterest show how his work has evolved. Creekside Pottery is based in Marietta, GA.
Speakers
Josh Goering (Fairway, KS)
Josh Goering was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. He is influenced by historical ceramics from Joseon dynasty Korean pots to medieval European jugs and tankards. Josh’s ideas surrounding art-making carry much from his environmental disposition, his love of process, and his inquisitive nature surrounding material. In 2021-22 he was a ceramics studio intern at STARworks. Josh is now in his first year of graduate study at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Currently, he is pursuing surface research; reduction cooling in gas kilns with local iron-bearing clays, kaolin slips, and terra sigillata. The surfaces created in this firing type range from austere and wintery to dark and dusky. Contrast is sought after by investigating ideas of light and dark, positive and negative, veiled or unveiled, processed or unprocessed
Jared Zehmer (Seagrove, NC)
Jared Zehmer’s ceramics education began at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond VA where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in ceramics. After graduation, seeking to continue his education in clay, he moved to the traditional pottery town of Seagrove NC where he worked as a journeyman potter, turning wares on a production level for several local pottery shops while developing his own work in his home studio. Pursuing efficiency through the balance of pace and momentum, Jared primarily focuses on the betterment of form and refinement of skill through repetition, as well as developing personal techniques and tools to help streamline the process. He also teaches classes and workshops and enjoys kiln repurposing, and his writings can be found in Pottery Making Illustrated and Ceramics Monthly.
Delores Farmer (Durham, NC)
Delores J. Farmer is a Durham Native and a self-taught potter based in Durham NC. She creates on the potter's wheel decorative and functional work. Using different techniques she creates texture and layers on her pottery that mimic natural shapes, colors, and textures. Delores is also the owner of Durham's 1st black-owned pottery teaching studio. She offers at her 3 locations, 6-week wheel and hand-building classes, studio rentals, and as well as assistantships to potters looking to learn more about the craft.