The Soda Chicks & Chet

TM

Suze Lindsay is a studio potter living and working in the NC mountains. Her ceramic studies include a two-year fellowship from 1987-89 at Penland School of Crafts as  a  “core student”, followed by earning an MFA from Louisiana State University.  She also holds two educational degrees, one in special education and the other in Montessori teaching theory.  In 1996, after completing three years as an artist in residence at Penland, Suze and her husband, Kent McLaughlin set up and began potting in their studio in Bakersville, NC under the name Fork Mountain Pottery.

Suze Lindsay’s stoneware pots subtley reference the figure, as she is known for her altered pottery forms that are decorated and fired in a salt kiln.  Her mark-making is strongly influenced by the study of historical ceramics with a focus on surface decoration used to enhance form by patterning and painting slips and glazes.  Suze has taught at numerous art centers and universities including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Nova Scotia School of Art and Design, Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute Curaumilla Art Center, and Ohio University   She has been a presenter at the Utilitarian Clay Conference in Tennessee, the Alabama Clay Conference, North Country Studio Conference in Vermont, and Fusion-Ontario Clay and Glass Association Conference in Toronto.  Awards include Best of Show in the First Annual Strictly Functional Pottery National, and Emerging Artist at the 2000 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Art conference.

Her work is in the permanent collections of George E Ohr Museum in Biloxi MS, Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taipei, Taiwan ,San Angelo Museum of Fine arts, San Angelo, TX.,  Islip Art Museum, NY,  Kennedy Museum of American Art, Athens OH,  Greenwich House Pottery, NY, Lancaster Museum of Art, East Petersburg, PA, Rocky Mount Arts Center, Raleigh, NC ,  The North Carolina Pottery Center, Seagrove, and Manchester Craftsmans Guild, Pittsburgh, PA

Solo Exhibitions in 2006 include the Manchester Craftsman Guild in Pittsburgh, PA and the North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove NC.

Kent McLaughlin is a studio potter who began his training in 1973 at Brevard Community College, the University of Central Florida, and Penland School of Crafts.

He apprenticed with a production potter before opening his own studio in 1985.  Kent works  in porcelain and stoneware clays, making utilitarian pots. He and his wife, Suze Lindsay, own and operate Fork Mountain Pottery in Bakersville NC.  In 2003, Kent began firing his cross-draft kiln using waste fry oil as an alternative fuel source. His glaze palette includes shinos, celadons, Mashiko khaki glazes, and iron reds, which reference the fertile grounds that surround his mountain studio and home.

He has taught at Anderson Ranch Art Center, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, and Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts, J.C. Campbell Folk School and Brevard Community College in Florida. In the Fall of 2005, Kent, along with his wife, Suze , were  visiting faculty members for West Virginia University’s exchange program in Jingdezen, China for 5 weeks  In January2008, Kent and Suze were invited to teach at Curaumilla Art Center, near Santiago, Chile. He exhibits locally as well as nationally, including invitational shows at The Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Baltimore Clayworks, Santa Fe Clay, Charleston Clayworks and Gallery 1021, Chicago.  He is a member of Southern Highland Craft Guild, Toe River Arts Council and the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts.

Gay Smith, aka Gertrude Graham Smith, is a studio potter single firing porcelain ware in a soda kiln near Penland, NC. She held artist-in-residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and at Penland School in Penland, NC. Her teaching credits include workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School, the Harvard Ceramics Studio, and the Findhorn Foundation in Northern Scotland. Her work is represented internationally, and can be viewed in publications including Making Marks and Functional Pottery by Robin Hopper, and Working with Clay by Susan Peterson. In 2006-7, she was selected as a recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship award, and in 222009/10 received a Regional Artist Project Grant through the AA Arts Council.

Working for nearly 30 years as a potter seems to develop qualities which I believe are of benefit: caring attention, commitment, honesty, courage, passion, hard work, love of beauty, and a willingness to get one’s hands dirty.

The movement and soft responsive feel of porcelain clay thrown on a potters wheel is celebrated in the vessels I make. I intend for the liveliness of my vessels to bring joy with their use and presence; they’re to be good companions for daily living. I’m thinking about possibilities like when a hand embraces my pottery cup, compassion arises in the heart.

2010 Visiting Artist, Silvie Granatelli

Being a potter is the giving and receiving of thanks. My pottery is about food presentation. It is made to bring foods to light. While function is a primary consideration, mood is of greater importance. I try to create atmosphere with my tableware. Considerations about mood or atmosphere contribute to the overall look and feel of my pieces. Ideas come easily, but meaning seems to come in layers over decades of time. It is meaning that gives strength to good ideas. I hope that my ideas have grown with my skills.

I am concerned with ritual as well. Rituals uncover the basic values, aims and attitudes of a people. I am half Sicilian and half Cajun, whose cultures are wrought with superstitions. Throw in a Catholic upbringing and I have rituals dancing all about me. Cooking has given me an avenue to explore and create my personal rituals. I began to cook when I was a teenager, and it has been a strong, sustaining interest in my life.

Currently I am interested in the notions of hospitality. Hospitality, which means to give and to receive. I view pottery as a vehicle of hospitality, because a pot gives and receives simultaneously; it is both host and guest.

I think about things like:

Food- which foods are chosen from those available; how they are prepared; with whom, and when they are eaten; and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating. Food is one of the means by which society creates itself, and acts out its aims and functions.

How do I, as a maker of tableware, direct the theater of dining? This is where I believe I have some ability to give something to society. Here I become the host and the guest. By thinking about foods as identity, as our physical selves, as a way of thought, as sex, as power, as friendship, as a medium of magic and witchcraft, as our time controller, I see food as the root culture: that which gives meaning to our lives.

I hope my ideas about dining will shape and dramatize the rituals surrounding food. I want my tableware to embody the unspoken assumptions of my heritage and culture.