ClayWays Gallery represents about 35 Central Texas and nationally known potters including:

Diana Seidel

www.dianaseidel.com

Diana Seidel took her first pottery class with Joanne Edelson in New York City in 1972. It was love at first sight. She apprenticed with Sally Silberberg in Plainfield, Massachusetts and took part in workshops with Karen Karnes, Bruno LaVerdiere and Byron Temple.

Diana had her studio in Garrison, New York from 1976 until 1996. During that time she worked full time as a potter, participating in twelve to fifteen craft shows each year. She also filled many special orders, both retail and wholesale.

In April, 1996, Diana and her family moved to Austin, Texas. Shortly thereafter, she set up her studio space at ClayWays, a teaching studio and gallery. Since then, she has been working with new clays, glazes and developing new lines of work. She has taught intermediate and advanced classes at ClayWays and helps to manage the gallery.

Emphasizing simplicity of form, Diana creates wheel-thrown stoneware with rich matte glazes. These lead-free and dishwasher-safe pieces are intended for daily use in the home.

Stan Irvin

2003 Rabb Road
Austin,TX 78704-3205
phone (512) 448-8685
stanleyi@adminin.stedwards.edu
myweb.stedwards.edu/stanleyi/index.htm

Stan set up the ceramics program at Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, Texas in 1974 and taught ceramics courses there until 1976. After receiving his M.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Texas at Austin he started the ceramics program at St. Edward’s University in 1976. As Associate Professor of Art, Stan is the Art Area Coordinator and Director of the Fine Arts Exhibit Program at St. Edward’s. Stan has also taught numerous classes in wheel throwing, at the Daugherty Art Center in Austin and advanced classes in wheel throwing and glaze formulation at Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram, Texas, and at Clayways in Austin.

Maintaining his studio in central Austin, Stan focuses primarily on high temperature, single fire stoneware vessel forms. He is a member of the National Council On Education For The Ceramic Arts, The Texas Association of Schools of Art, and is an active member of Greater Austin Clay Artists.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Though clay continually reminds me of the value of rhythm and commitment in ones life and work, taking time for playful experimentation is often what is most fulfilling. The technical and expressive challenge of working with clay evolves out of experimentation, taking risks, and acting on intuitive hunches. The muse, for me, becomes the occasional, elusive, and unexpected glimpse of surprising potential in the clay and in myself.

Michael Biechlin

Michael Biechlin has worked as a professional potter for 22 years. He received both his BFA and MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. He began his work using a stoneware clay making functional pottery. He then began to work in porcelain because he enjoyed the tactile qualities of the clay and quality of the glaze on the porcelain body. Additionally, Michael has worked with the raku firing process.

Currently, Michael is working as a Landscape Contractor with his brother, Brink, who is a Landscape Architect. Together they own a company called Groundsmasters Landscape Services. Michael is still making pottery in his mind and occasionally in his studio. He lives in Austin with his wife, Cary, their lab Henry, and Pearl, their cat. They also have a son, Adam, who lives and works in Austin.

Todd Van Duren

www.toddvanduren.com

Don Bebout

website

When my older son left a pottery wheel in my garage before departing for UCLA in the fall of 1985, the die was cast; soon I was taking evening classes at local Austin pottery studios. But even as I became more and more involved in pottery, it still remained secondary to my career as a research geologist at the University of Texas. However, my interest in design and production of pottery increased through encouragement from friends and acquaintances and by rapidly increasing sales. Finally, in 1994, I retired from the University and became a full-time potter.

Bridget Hauser

My love of clay began as a child of 8. Living next door to two ceramic artists, playing in their studios and taking advantage of the generous time they would spend with me, gave me a life long direction After Graduating from Indiana University with a B.A. in ceramics and spending a couple of years starting a family in northern Indiana, my husband Bill and I found our way to Austin, TX, with our two infant daughters.

I spent 10 years working for, and then becoming a partner, with the original owners of Clarksville Pottery. In 1996 my husband Bill and I established the Sunset Canyon Pottery. Our dream was to bring together my love for clay and pottery with my husband’s dream of having a family business.

The facility we built houses a gallery of approximately 1000 square feet and a working studio 3000 sq. ft. We create and market the Sunset Canyon Pottery line, represent a little over 100 craftsman within the gallery and provide classes for the community. As a family business our youngest daughter manages the gallery, my husband the finances and physical plant, and I the creative end and staff. It keeps us all very busy.

I enjoy teaching as well and the business and creative aspects of the ceramic world. I teach in my studio and as an adjunct in the Ceramics dept. of St. Edwards University and have served as the Austin regional director for the Texas Clay Arts Association (TCAA). Currently I am also an active member of the Greater Austin Area Clay Artists (GACA).

Kathy Hull

Eric Jackson

With twenty-three years experience with clay, eighteen years as a working potter, Eric Jackson brings a lot of experience to his classes. Add his earnest enthusiasm for working with people, and place him in the context of a long-term love affair with clay, then you can see why his classes are great opportunities to learn, and to hone, wheel-throwing technique.

A high school requirement became the focus of a BFA at UT Austin. Eric worked at Clarksville Pottery in the mid 1980’s, with Don Herron Clayworks until 1998, and took up with Sunset Canyon Pottery in 2000. Along the way, Eric started Texas Medicine Pottery, and built two studios. Eric’s experience teaching has been as a guest artist at Westlake High School and as an instructor at the Austin Museum of Art’s Art School. He was chosen as an Emerging Artist at the 2003 Texas Clay Fest.

Eric and Roxanne Jackson live in Buda with their daughter Emma, and their long time companion, Australian Shepard/Labrador wonder, Ruby.

Terri Gray

Bill Campbell

www.campbellpottery.com

When designing pots, I am always aware of the possibilities and limitations of the wonderful/dreadful layered glaze I employ. An enigmatic mistress, it is very fussy about the body it resides upon. It often crawls, blisters and crazes and the color isn't always reliable. Though demanding. it is however, just too vibrant and exciting to simply dismiss as too troublesome. This means that everything must be technically perfect in order to achieve its full potential. Because I refuse to compromise in these processes, I have had to learn clay production and firing techniques that are not used in most studio potteries.

Jim Dale

I like making pottery for people to use, casseroles for baking, teapots that pour( and drip sometimes) and bowls that hold your favorite stew and will even break when your 3-year old drops it on the tile, although he’s been told a thousand times not to wear it on his head like a helmet.

I have no education, I dropped out of school at 6 to join the circus but I never did find them. I joined a commune in Oklahoma until I learned they were serving 3.2 beer and that there are no communes in Oklahoma. I came across clay by accident when I was digging a septic system in my back yard. Potters say “When you get clay on your hands, it never washes off.” Well this was certainly true for me. From there, I traveled back across the Red River where I studied at North Texas State with the great CW Block. I learned all I know about clay and life from this master. The banjo playing and constant talk of his greatness nearly drove me CRAZY but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (I guess). The drive to “BECOME CW” has kept me going ever since.

Mike Grafa

www.grafapottery.com

Mike received his BFA degree from Texas Tech University with a concentration in painting. He got his MFA in ceramics from North Texas State University. After graduating, Mike taught ceramics at Tarrant County Jr. College and Texas Weslean College. He now lives with his wife Norma in Austin, Texas where he teaches at Austin Community College and works in his studio.

Mike’s work is displayed in Clarksville Galleries in Austin as well as other galleries throughout the southwest. Mike has exhibited his work at art fairs in Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Mike works in porcelain clay and uses high-fire glazes in vivid colors. The brush work in the glazes reflects his interest in painting.

Jason Hooper

www.southpawceramics.com

Sunset Canyon Pottery

www.sunsetcanyonpottery.com

Kris Asthalter

For me it was a natural progression from biology to German literature to clay bird puppets. I walked in to ClayWays in the mid 1990’s to visit my old buddy Kit, and she suggested I take a class. I started with wheel, and soon became Kit’s apprentice, loading kilns, mixing glazes and getting hooked on clay. (The first bag’s free.) When taking a class from Diana Seidel I made a fountain that was a combination of a wheel thrown basin with handbuilt legs. It involved birds. It was fun to make and still makes me laugh. Thrown pieces rarely make me laugh. I enjoy handbuilding bird puppets, bird whistles, bird masks, and wren houses that are bird heads. I also enjoy learning from my students and watching them get carried away with clay. If there are a dozen people in the class there are always at least a dozen different and wonderful interpretations of any demonstration I share with them. Clay is like that.

Cindy Haenel

Gery Henderson

Gery Henderson was born in El Paso, Texas. The rich culture and history of that region, where Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua all come together, indelibly influenced his artistic sensibilities. When Gery moved to Austin, Texas in 1985, he was primarily designing and producing functional leather items. He started working in clay in 1997 and currently teaches raku and hand building at ClayWays.

In his art, towers are stamped with Mayan deities, bones, and trucks. Rockets launch from electrical sockets or fly across heart-shaped moonscapes. Brightly colored toy cars are emblazoned on boxes and coffins. Chile flames encircle objects floating on hearts. Skulls are molded out of smashed clay objects. Cars or trucks are stretched across skulls where names of the dead would appear in Mexico’s sugar skull tradition, because in America we are our cars. Three dimensional lotería cards (a Mexican game similar to bingo) reflect a border influence.

Gery’s art embodies images from low-rider street competitions, Mayan art, church jamaicas, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and el Día de los Muertos, with its playful representations of skulls, skeletons, devils, and coffins. Images from New Mexico—Roswell aliens and other unexplained phenomena, Hatch chile, and White Sands missile launches—also find their way into his art. These images are often combined with images of toys and other found objects.

The majority of his work is raku-fired using commercial glazes in addition to glazes he has developed and refined to produce desired effects.

Tom Hicks

Connie McCreary

www.fond-of-fire.com/

Connie McCreary began working with clay in 1981 while working as a junior high art teacher. She earned a Masters Degree in Ceramics from the University of Dallas in1986. She has taught ceramics in a variety of venues from public arts projects and public schools to private workshops, lectures, demonstrations and community college courses. Connie has shown her work in many craft sales and galleries in Texas. Ms McCreary is currently the Austin Regional Director for Texas Clay Arts Association. In addition to the responsibilities of TCAA, she has been the leader of the newly founded, Greater Austin Clay Artists since May of 2003.

Currently Connie is happily producing work for sales and shows in her new studio, Fond of Fire Ceramics Studio, in Dripping Springs, TX, the “Gateway to the Hill Country,” just ten minutes southwest of Austin on HWY 290 W.

Susan Muense

Susan Page

Roni Powalski

I grew up in downtown Buffalo, New York. Every year the Allentown Art Festival would set up one block away from our home. My brother and I would hang out for the weekend of the festival getting to know the artists year after year. It always seemed that the potters were the friendliest. I bought my first piece of pottery when I was a Junior in highschool and that was when my love affair with clay began. I had an opportunity to work in clay during my last two years of college. After graduation, I took a 10 year hiatus from clay to concentrate on raising my two young children.

I returned to clay when my husband was transfered to Houston in the early 90's. There, I studied with several local professionals. At North Harris Community College, I learned to fine tune my craft . I have since moved to Austin where I teach adult throwing classes at Clayways Pottery Studio and Gallery.

The functional pottery I create is made of a white stoneware clay that is fired to cone 8 (2100*F) in an oxidation atmosphere. I have developed a palette of food-safe glazes that have bold, intense color and flow in the firing to activate the surfaces of my forms. My work may be purchased through home sales, galleries and a few fine art shows each year.

I still love the excitement of juried shows. My pieces have been selected for competitions including ENCECA, Strictly Functional, Craft USA, and Clay Times.

Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Saturday: 11:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sunday: 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm