Kathy Pallie enjoyed a career in commercial art but found her passion in clay work after retirement. She explores texture and surface manipulation of clay through techniques like pinching, incising, and rolling. Nicole Sisco Heller is a middle school art teacher who uses clay projects like pie making to engage her students in artistic work. Victor Spinski was commissioned to design a non-traditional tea set in the 1970s, which led him to discover conceptual similarities between his work and Chinese Yixing artisans, who used unusual natural materials like tree trunks in their teapot designs. Beate Kuhn creates sculptural ceramic works by assembling individually thrown and cut clay elements. Her pot

1. Clay & Plaster

2. Kathy Pallie
she enjoyed a career in
commercial art, designing
products for retail store
windows and interior
displays, trade show booths
and special events. This
involved working with many
different materials. When
she retired and put my
hands into clay, she knew
this was an exciting material
which she explored further.

4. Texture and surface
exploration integrated with
a 3-dimensional form have
always been an important
part of her work. her hands
manipulate the clay by
pushing, pulling, pinching,
incising and rolling it,
creating an effect which
evokes both the visual and
the tactile senses.

5. Nicole Sisco Heller
Nicole Sisco Heller is an
artist and middle school
art teacher in Warwick,
New York.
She uses art to teach her
classes, mainly clay foods,
such as pie. She uses the
colour and texture to
involve her students in the
work,

7. Victor Spinski
In the later 1970's, one of
his collectors commissioned
him to design a non-traditional
tea set. Through
his research on various
teaposts forms, he
discovered that his art
shared a conceptual
philosophy with the work of
the Yixing artisans of
eastern China.

9. The Yxing (pronounced
yesshing) artists indulged in
the use of improbable
materials, such as tree
trunks, disfigured branches,
fruits and rocks, in designing
their teapot forms. The
execution of these forms was
exquisite, both in design and
craftsmanship.

10. Beate Kuhn
In 1957 Beate Kuhn
moved to Düdelsheim and
set up her own workshop.
Since the early 1960’s
Beate Kuhn has created
freely designed
sculptures, each piece
consisting of individual
thrown and cut elements,
assembled into a whole.

12. The works of Beate Kuhn are
known in the whole world.
Her awards and honors are
numerous. Beate Kuhn’s
artistic work is characterized
by her pottery: the potter’s
wheel is her base tool. The
sheer number of one-off
pieces by the artist – more
than 1,500, all bear her
unmistakable and
fascinating personal touch.

13. Annie Woodford
Annie Woodford studied at the Royal
College of Art in London, receiving a
travel scholarship and graduating
with a MA in Ceramics and Glass.
Shortly after graduating, she had her
first solo show at the Royal Overseas
League and the Anatol Orient
Gallery, London, began to represent
her work, introducing it to collectors
in the both the U.K. and the U.S.A.
Since then, Woodford’s work has
been exhibited nationally and
internationally and is included in
private and public collections
worldwide.

15. Introduced to printmaking by Sir
Eduardo Paolozzi, who was her
tutor, it has become an integral
part of her practice and she
continues to develop the medium
alongside object making, using it
to explore the themes and
concerns fundamental to her
work. Short-listed for major
awards, Woodford’s etchings and
collagraphs are part of several
important print collections and
recently she has begun to explore
the medium of artists’ books