Joe Muench

These are metal boxes by Joe Muench. They are so intricate and precise, which makes me want to hold them and look at their details even more closely. They appear to tell a story, the images on the boxes seem like snapshots of a larger picture or narrative. Perhaps all of the images refer back to details from a particular person’s life story? My knowledge about working with metal is pretty limited but I would imagine that creating such little details on metal would be quite a process.

Bogdan Teodorescu

I like this artist soully for the very unique glazing job they did on their pieces. It is almost as if they have a collage on each piece and it's really cool, as if they were doing a mixed media piece on a ceramic work. I think this is a really creative and neat idea. This artist has their own style and they really take charge with it in their simple ceramic works like these plain plates, and turn them non plain.

Annie Woodford

I am fascinated by the natural world senses she puts in her works. I like any art to do with nature in general because I myself really like nature. But it looks as though she's examining nature on a microscopic scale which is looking at things a different way to look at than you are typically supposed to. I love it when people take things, distort it or make you observe it a different way, and then you get another view of it too. It's very fascinating to me how she came up with the ideas for her works.
 

Kira O'Brien

Her work has a sculptural yet functional element to it and encompasses a sense of traditional ceramic techniques. Within this tradition is the art of storytelling and symbols which evoke certain sentiments and nostalgia but also a sense of the present environment. This environment is psychological and therefore each piece points to emotions within the narrative.
 

Liliana Folta

I read about the images that she has created and they are memories of her. I like how in these memories she is displaying almost every emotion you could experience; happiness, family loss, first love, motherhood, etc. She does every medium but particularly likes ceramic, and using mixed media in her ceramics which is a neat freedom I like to see people use to expand the dimensions of their projects. I love how her work is very spontaneous and out there, so I can tell she's not afraid to create.

Jenni Ward

I like how her work focuses on hor organic forms interact with the space they are in. She creates abstract arrangements reflecting the biological world and they explore tensions that deal with randomness and negative space. Some of the forms are simplified to a geometric composition rather than their organic findings as it would be in nature which is a cool way to symbolize the pieces she is creating. It's making these objects beautiful in an asymmetric balance.

Ruth Powers

I really like the repetitive use of octopi in her works. The look of a tentacle is really cool but yet surprising in each of her pieces. Each tentacle has so little careful detail on it that must have taken hours to make but yet it worth it when the eye gets to look at it. I really like these pieces.

Steve Belz

I like how natural elements and manufactured elements were brought together in these works to make art. They each have a natural look to them as well as obviously man made attention too. This creates a cool tension in each piece that makes you take a step back and take a deeper look.

Patricia Sannit

Patricia has a unique sense of style where a lot of her objects are created to look like wood objects. When I first looked at some of her pieces I thought it was carved from wood until I read deeper and it said it was ceramic art. I thought it was really cool how she could make something look so much like another material. I also like that she can create one big thing out of many small objects to make one piece of art.

Elizabeth Shriver

This artist makes really neat organic forms. I like the detail in all the different texture she made. It looks like a variety of hand building methods were used like slabs, coiling, pinching, etc which is neat for such a variety in techniques. She uses natural earth tones and stains rather than glazes to color her pieces so they look more organic which is a cool natural look for her style of having texture be the main component of her pieces.

David Gallagher

I like how David's works use more than one medium. Most ceramic artist's work is just simply clay. But Davide pulls other aspects and medias into his work. His main use of effect is using light and shadow to dramatize the clay. It has a really cool effect, especially when you see the light on the project with the almost creepy shadows behind it.

Francesco Ardini

The texture on the ideas of these works is awesome. I love how realistic is looks like bubbles are covering the bottom pictures, and how the first picture looks like it is literally spaghetti noodles weaved together. I like how they aren't plain and simple pottery, but they took it to the next level and made it have more than one level of looking at it.

Ellen Schon

I like the idea that although this looks like it could be more, this in the end is just a ceramic vessel, like common other works. This artist strives to have the vessels be something beyond itself and to function as a metaphor. It looks like it's made more for the eye rather than to have a purpose which in this  case I think is good. Exploring the territory of vessels and how far you can go and have it still be a vessel form is a really cool idea to me.

Michael Fargo

I like the emphasis of texture in this work. It's nothing like what I usually see when I look at clay art, which is what I like most about it. His uniqueness drew me to it, and the abstractness of line and imitation of line.

John Mason

John Mason has a very artistic style. He makes a wide variety of things as  you can see here. He is very good at making geometric shaped pottery with sharp lines and edges. He is a master at makes smooth sides and edges as well, making everything look as though it could have been made in a factory, as well as making things so smooth it looks like liquid. I find this ability amazing because I especially had trouble smoothing out my sides and making the clay a smooth surface when in the class. It's really amazing how he can use his hands to create such simple, but talented art.

Bill Abright

I find Bill Abright's pieces very eye catching. I like how the animal piece (the bird in this picture) is pieced together kind of like a puzzle and has different elements pieced together. The facial expression in the mask piece is also very interesting and almost looks like a wood carving piece. I like the artistic detail used in each of these completely different types of work, and I like that he has a wide variety of things he makes.


 

Robin Henschel

I like the stylized detail in all of Robin Henschel's pieces. I really like the fact that she used animals in a lot of her pieces. It was a comical and artistic addition to the pieces to make them funner and lighter. This started off her infatuation when she was 12 and she kept using the animal idea since. I think its a good way she can have a variety by making pottery but including the fun detail of animals.
http://www.clayartcenter.org/category_s/429.htm

http://www.castleclayartists.net/Artist.asp?ArtistID=20959&Akey=HKACJ6VA
This is a link to a clay artist names Shane Porter. I thought their stuff was interesting because most of the work is made to look like it is made from a different material than clay, like this one for example looks like it is made from metal. Some of them look like a weaved basket, where some look like cast iron. I thought this was a very cool technique they used in all of their vessels.

David Gilbaugh

This teapot by David Gilbaugh could possibly be one of my favorite ceramic pieces that I have seen. That wood like texture looks amazing, and looks almost like a small wood stump rather than a teapot. Also this versatility to be useful also adds to the piece. I could see a rich art enthusiast buying this for there house tea set.

Rafa Perez

I found the work of Rafa Perez quite interesting. I really like the crazy glaze and the roughly texture of the work adds too the overall disfigured shape. All of the work of Rafa Perez's that I have seen look rather different from this piece, but still share many of the same textural qualities. I plan on taking some of these characteristics and incorporating them into my own work.

Favorite Working Artist

 

My favorite present day working artist is El Anatsui. I discovered the work of El Anatsui this year while on a visit to the Des Moines Art Center. Nearly the whole Art Center was based on the work of Anatsui, which many times consist of millions of 1inch aluminum squares. I really like his work because of its massive size and the elaborate designs that are created, and I would strongly advise anyone check out some of his work!

First Art Experience

 

 

I cannot say that I would be where I am today without the guidance of this man. Though difficult to work with Mike Burgher helped me realize my talent and love for art. He was a very talented artist and an even better teacher, he is also the one who inspired me to become an art teacher.

 

 

Stan Welsh

I think Welsh's portraits are very interesting. The facial expressions he gives the heads are quite unusual, yet are supposed to represent actual human emotions. He works in terracotta and makes the heads 4-5x larger than a normal sized head is. His use of metallic and bright colors to the pieces make them stand out as well as adds interesting characteristics to the faces. His use of semi-everyday objects added to the portraits also is very unique.

David Furman

I find David Furman's work very interesting. He does an incredible job at creating his pieces to look realistic. He is known for his work with fruits, and his coffe cup pieces, but I personally am drawn to his figurative pieces. I really enjoy trying to guess what the interaction is between the figures. He does an incredible job at creating the right poses for his figures, that it creates a sense of reality. Keeping the figures not detailed but simply broken down into the basic parts I think really adds to the "basic interactions" people have among other people.

Rimas VisGirda

VisGirda's work reminds me of Kurt Weisers pieces. These are more comedic though, and use a big more of unrealistic coloring. I find his pieces very interesting between the texture of the pieces to the amazing artwork painted onto them. His color choice is very balanced, and I think it is interesting to add the metallic colors to the pieces.

Justin Novak

Justin Novak's figurative pieces are quite interesting. I find the figures proportions fairly precise, but the message behind his pieces can be quite grotesque. Each piece is a specific metaphor resembling  injury, or self esteem, or other physical harm. His pieces are raku firing which gives them a unique texture and almost a shattering of glass effect, which could also resemble the harm to the body that he expresses as his metaphors.

Iowa Art Teacher

I found this neat article online about a high-school art teacher (in Council Bluffs!) that built an anagama kiln with his students. What a seriously amazing opportunity for those students. It sounds like it was quite a bit of work, as I would imagine, but was a lot of fun and provided lots of learning experiences for the students. Most teachers don't have the budget or time to do anything more than pieces fired in an electric kiln once a year, so this teachers determination and enthusiasm is all the more awe inspiring. I'm not sure that I would be ambitious/knowledgeable/comfortable-around-fire enough to attempt something like this (sorry future students :)), but I am crazy impressed with this guy!

http://ceramicartsdaily.org/firing-techniques/wood-kiln-firing/building-an-anagama-kiln-for-a-high-school-ceramics-class/

Bill Abright

I find Bill Abright's pieces extremely intriguing to look at. whether it is his animals that are fit together with different elements of sources or his masks of human faces. He has a very interesting way of showing expressions on his masks, which remind me almost of faces of trees. A large amount of them have birds propped on them in some sort of way, which could indicate that they represent trees. The animals are extremely unique since they are not exact portraits of animals but have the correct shape of them. There is a lot of detail to them that makes them very eye catching.