Amy Manson
Featured Artist for March 2011
My passion is working with clay; a soft malleable substance, throwing, forming, urging it into an object of both beauty and function. An object which can be admired touched, held, and used in daily life. This process and transformation of the soft clay into a hard and beautiful object meant to be seen, used, passed along, maybe even eventually broken and given back to the earth seems to mirror personal growth and transformation.
I use High fired stoneware and porcelain in my work and enjoy glaze colors and themes which can be found in nature. I try to incorporate a combination of family, prayer, meditation, nature, and the creation of pottery into every single day of my life as part of my own personal growth and transformation. It gives me great insight and joy to create a one of a kind piece of artwork. I hope others enjoy viewing and utilizing the pottery as much as I enjoyed making it!
Amy Manson has been creating with clay for the past 9 years. She has studied at Penland School of Craft, Odyssey Center for Ceramic Art and Clayworks Charlotte in North Carolina. Her work is displayed in galleries in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. She teaches advanced and beginner wheel as well as hand building to both adults and children at The Old Furniture Factory in Round Hill, VA, The Round Hill Arts Center, and Artsquare in Leesburg, VA. Amy resides in Leesburg, Virginia with her husband and two children.
Gail Gore
Featured Artist for October 2011
Gail Gore has lived in Savannah Lakes Village with her husband, Brian, for eight years. She returned to her native state of South Carolina after living in Michigan where she worked as a realtor. Gail dabbled in pottery making as a teenager using an old kick wheel. Her Mother would laugh when Gail left a note saying, “I’ve gone to pot.”
In 1997, she bought her first potter wheel and found time to take night courses at Grosse Point South High School. In the year 2000, when the Gores moved to SLV, only a few miles from her hometown of Greenwood, Gail purchased a kiln and better wheel and became a serious potter. Working from her basement studio, she uses six different colors of stoneware clay, 27 glazes, and loves to experiment with blending and overlapping colors. “My mother and I agreed that my business should be called “Gone To Pot,” says Gail. Her greatest honor came when her church, - McCormick United Methodist – asked Gail to make the Paten and Chalice that is used for Holy Communion.
Ella Arnold
Featured Artisan for August 2008
Ella Arnold is a North Carolina transplant now living and working in Georgia. In college she majored in art but was never exposed to ceramics until years later when she took a continuing education class at a local college. Immediately she fell in love with the art of working with clay and knew she had found her medium. Ella is basically self-taught but has had the privilege of studying under well-known ceramists such as Rick Berman, Paul Lewing, Pete Pinnell and Robin Hopper. She has also studied at Arrowmont.
Ella exhibits and sells her pieces at shows across the Southeast and has been featured in the Bob Timberlake Gallery and catalogue. Her love of nature shows in Ella’s decoration that she adds to each hand-thrown piece. Slight variations make each piece an individual work of art.
Ella enjoys creating unique, functional ceramics that are also decorative, and she says, “I hope everyone will love using them as much as I enjoy making them.”
