SALES GALLERY July Featured Artists

Bianka Groves, Joshua Hebbert, Forrest Lesch-Middelton, Ian M. Petrie Jewelry Spotlight: Kate Marotz

July 5 – 30

Sales Gallery & Online

Bianka Groves

Bianka Groves received her BFA from Corcoran College of Art & Design (Washington, DC). Her work is simple and calm; it is intended to add balance to a fast-paced world. There is a bold contrast between the white of the porcelain and the incised black lines but her sense of touch is very delicate. Groves uses an inlay process, which entails covering the piece in wax and drawing through it with razors or acupuncture needles to achieve a thin, constant line, painting the carved areas in black glaze, and wiping away anything that is not in the lines. This creates a tattoo-like effect on the clay. Her high-fire porcelain wares are polished after firing to create a satiny, soft touch, each piece revealing her hand at play.

Joshua Hebbert

Originally from rural western Nebraska, Joshua Hebbert now lives in Bornholm, Denmark, where he is the ceramic technician for the Royal Danish Academy (Copenhagen). Before relocating to Denmark, he spent six years in Philadelphia, where he was a resident at The Clay Studio and taught at a variety of institutions. Hebbert’s ceramic practice is centered on experimentation and mold making as a generative process to create slip cast vessels with organically mottled colors. His process includes using plaster molds to capture prototypes, then layering colored slips to reflect and play with different moments of interior and exterior space. After taking slip cast pots out of their molds, Hebbert carves off the outer layer, unearthing unpredictable shapes and patterns. He poetically likens this process to constellations becoming visible in the night sky—shapes shift and evolve and transform.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton

Forrest Lesch-Middelton earned his BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and his MFA from Utah State University (Logan). In 2014, he was honored as Ceramicist of the Year by Ceramics Monthly and in 2017, Lesch-Middelton was awarded a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists from Northern Clay Center (Minneapolis, MN). His body of work, inspired by the traditions of Middle Eastern ceramics, is comprised of functional pottery that celebrates and contrasts the history of those ancient civilizations with the contemporary global political climate and its impact in the region. Lesch-Middelton’s work features image transfer, as well as a process he developed himself for transposing the image while the pot is still being thrown, which he calls “volumetric image transfer.” Since 2013, he has owned and operated his own company, Origins Tile, which makes tile for private and corporate locations internationally.

Kate Marotz

Kate Marotz received her BFA in ceramics and BS in art education from the University of Wisconsin-Stout (Menomonie, WI). Since 2015, she has been teaching high school art while simultaneously pursuing and exploring her own studio practice. Her current work bridges sculpture and functionality with pinched stoneware objects inspired by seed pods, chrysalides, shells and other vessels of natural origin. The surfaces of her objects are painted with terra sigillata in calm, muted versions of both earthy and jewel-toned colors. Marotz’s pieces are ridged, speckled, playful, and precarious. They emanate the energy of creatures from a biome at the junction of desert and ocean, at once feeling newborn and contemporary, treasured and ancient.