GEOFF BIRD

Geoff is the senior member of the Black Mountain (NC) Center for the Arts Clay Studio resident potters by virtue of his teaching at the Center since 2000 and 40 years working in the ceramic arts.   His experience in making beautiful pottery has led him to representation throughout the southeast.  He now makes his home in Swannanoa, NC, where he also has his own Morning Sky Studio.

At the BMCA Clay Studio Geoff teaches a basic clay class, including wheel throwing, as well as a class in raku technique and firing.  Raku is a Japanese low-fired pottery that is usually fired in a special barrel or pit with items such as sawdust or newsprint added to enhance the glazes.

Geoff studied at various schools and studios in North Carolina when pottery was experiencing a renaissance in the 1960’s.  He has experimented with various clay bodies, glazes, and firing techniques.

As a teacher, Geoff is admired and emulated by his students, from age 3 to retirees.   He is patient and encouraging with folks who start working with clay for the first time.

JUDI ASHE

Judi's artistic history is a richly woven web of life and work experiences. Before becoming a clay artist, Judi practiced as a licensed Architect for seven years, focusing on appropriate technologies and working directly in the building process, maintaining an intense passion for the crafts. She lived and worked at the Arcosanti Project in Arizona for nine years, which is an ongoing prototypical village and intentional community based on sustainable architecture and design build apprenticeship concepts. Judi began to work in clay there in their production studio, using unorthodox casting methods and making tiles. She attended Penland School Of Crafts, in Penland NC in l994, where she studied under Mary Barringer and realized her love for hand building with clay. Judi lived at Penland for three years, studying hand building and developing her own unique style of work.

In Black Mountain, NC Judi started "HANDS ON"- A Center for the Integration of the Creative and Healing Arts, where she worked as a full time clay artist and taught classes for two years. She went on from there to become a full time production artist and instructor, making unique hand built functional ware for galleries all over the country, teaching private clay classes, and also teaching hand building at Warren Wilson College.  Her classes range from basic hand building techniques to mask making, slab building techniques, oil lamp construction, sawdust firing techniques, dinnerware construction, sacred vessels, forms from nature, solid build sculptures, pinch pot meditations, low tech clay techniques, hollow forms, and much more.  Through her teaching, Judi is most passionate about helping each student bring forth a unique vocabulary through the clay.  She now teaches for the Black Mountain Center for the Arts Clay Studio.

Judi works mostly with Cone 5 stoneware and fires in oxidation, using glazing techniques that resemble reduction-firing effects.  The forms and surfaces of Judi's unique creations have an ancient quality to them, and are often inspired by shapes and patterns in nature. The colorful glazes combined with striking impressed patterns with stains and terrasigilats, set off the surfaces of her work beautifully, creating a pleasing balance between primitive and refined effects.

GWEN OTTINGER

Gwen Ottinger, a Maryland native, is currently the Visual Arts teacher at Artspace Charter School in Swannanoa. A B.F.A. graduate from East Carolina University with a concentration in ceramic arts, she completed her K-12 Visual Arts certification for teaching art at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and completed a pottery apprenticeship in Baltimore. Her work has been sold in several area galleries. In addition to teaching art, she enjoys gardening, pottery and printmaking, and spending time with her husband and two daughters.

MAUREEN JOYCE

Maureen Joyce will teach Beginning Wheel classes as well as assist with Open Studio times. Joyce, who studied Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, is currently the manager of Morning Sky Pottery on Cherry Street in Black Mountain. One of the very first students to enroll in classes at the renovated BMCA Clay Studio, she has been involved in every aspect of its revival – from running Open Studio times to assisting with both Raku and Pit-fire workshops to making the letters for the sign on the front to organizing the Pottery Markets to cleaning the studio – she is tireless! Maureen is the mother of three, a son and two daughters. She and her husband, Kevin, live with their family and assorted animals on a nearby farm.

WILL BYERS

Will Byers began working with clay over twenty years ago, while studying ceramic arts at the University of Tennessee. He founded New Moon Pottery in 1995, upon completing a 30-month apprenticeship at Monsarrat Pottery, near Knoxville, Tennessee. Will moved to Western North Carolina in 2000, where he met his wife Trish. Will and Trish re- established the pottery in Swannanoa, and then in Black Mountain, changing the name to Byers Pottery. The Byers Pottery studio specializes in functional, high-fired stoneware, with rich beautiful glazes.

Will's teaching style is such that students are inspired to work at their own pace - either fast, slow, or in between. Plenty of encouragement and positive feedback are given, as well as individual attention, to help students work out their own relationship with clay, and the potter’s process.