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About the Artists
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 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 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. Most recently, she was selected as a recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship award for 2006-7.
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. Most recently, she was selected as a recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship award for 2006-7.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.
My work embodies a liveliness and spontaneity reflective of processes by which it is made: altering the form and surface of freshly thrown clay and firing in an atmospheric kiln where flame path decorates the surfaces.
The Soda Chicks & Chet
2008 Visiting Artist, Nick Joerling
I make pots as much from a drawing sensibility as a pottery one. Daydreaming with a pencil. Not drawing as rendering but simply doodling, then working hard to get that drawing to work as a functioning pot. Profile line is a strong attraction, a strong dictate, as are the smaller spaces within spaces. And of course that sense of animation. My pot reference is most often you and I, our bodies. It's where my cues come from: dance, people seated on a park bench, the cleavage that forms on the inside of a bent elbow. But I want to stay in the pot's world-- too literal and the pots seem deflated. In my studio what I hope for are pots that have qualities of sensuality, compassion, humor and risk.
2008 Visiting Artist, Lisa Bruns
Lisa received a BFA from Jacksonville University in 1982. She promptly accepted a job tending bar in Atlanta. After many years of bending over backwards to please customers her back went out. A few years of physical therapy and rehabilitation followed. Then it was time to reinvent herself. Lisa returned to a life-long love of working with her hands. For the past 12 years Lisa has been a studio artist working in figurative clay and jewelry in Folly Beach, South Carolina. She recently moved to Penland, North Carolina and is enjoying the change of view, savoring a new daily source of inspiration in the local flora, fauna and flavor of the mountain lifestyle.
