Artist Kyle Sowa

The Tri-Cities are booming with arts and artists — perhaps nowhere more vibrantly than Batavia’s Water Street Studios, which hosts events, galleries and up to 25 artists in residence. Each month, Kane County Magazine and Water Street Studios are partnering to highlight artists and their work.

Lifelong creative Kyle Sowa has been a resident artist with Water Street Studios since 2021 when a WSS pottery instructor, Jeremy Foy, invited Sowa to become a clay maker subscriber. “I took him up on that suggestion and have been playing around with clay as a clay subscriber since,” says Sowa.

Sowa’s love for pottery began in college and has been a source of great joy and practicality for the artist. “It was my final semester of university, and it was meant to be a fun class,” says Sowa. “Instead, it turned into something I fell in love with. I enjoyed the physicality of it, the process, the outcome. It’s an art form that can have equal parts artistic value but also practical value.”

In his career as an artist, Sowa has combined his creativity with practical application through inventive challenges. “I play Dungeons and Dragons with friends from college,” says Sowa. “For the end of a campaign, I decided I was going to craft a mug for each player. Each mug was going to represent each individual character or role they played within the game. For months I produced these mugs in secret without my friends knowing what I was doing. Trying to figure out how I was going to tailor each mug for each character/player was a challenge. I made six mugs in total and shipped them off to each of my friends with instructions not to open until we had finished the game. My friends loved it and I’m still very proud of the work I did.”

As an individual who has had a close relationship with creativity and imagination since he was small, Sowa continues his passion

About the Artist

After taking his first pottery class in 2017, Kyle Sowa has never looked back. The artist is constantly evolving and honing his craft, finding more love for the art form every day. – “I make stuff that is meant to be used, held, taken through life. It brings me great joy to know someone connected with a mug I made and find out they have their morning coffee with it every day.”

DETAILS OF Kyle Sowa’s WORK:

To view more of Kyle Sowa's ceramic creations, follow him on Instagram @riverowlpottery.

u Ko mug: One mug in a series of ceramic mugs based on Dungeons and Dragons characters v Gingko leaf-patterned plate: Gingko leaves pressed into clay w Ceramic mug x Commissioned hand-built ceramic structures for snakes in a terrarium

For more information on the artist of the month, head to www.waterstreetstudios.org or the organization’s social media pages.