Keep It Simple: Working with Porcelain

Birdz Returning

Karen Green Stone Pottery

Karen’s porcelain and stoneware pottery is wheel thrown, often altered and decorated with thick slip and by carving, appliquéing and incising. She uses fossils, seashells, fabric and kitchen tools for decoration. For color, she applies glaze over glaze, uses wax resist brush decoration and touches up with metallic oxide washes. She also uses local Indiana clay slip on some of her stoneware pieces. Karen high fires her work in a gas reduction atmosphere to the temperature of approximately 2350F.

“I’m guided by the concept taught to me by my teacher Nan McKinnnell at Loretta Heights College in Denver, ‘the first 100 don’t count’. I’m moving into to keeping it simple, as well, being patient with the process. Repetition helps me understand a form, a glaze, a texture. I strive to create pieces that stand alone as beautiful, are sensuous to the touch and function for every day use.”

Karen is a founding member of Local Clay Potters’ Guild. She is also a founding member of Artisan Guilds of Bloomington.

Opening Reception: Friday, June 3rd, 5-8 PM
On Display: June 3rd – July 30th

In conjunction with Gallery Walk, the Fountain Square Poetry Series will be hosting their June event in the Fountian Square Mall atrium from 5:30-7:30 PM.

Presented by Writers Guild at Bloomington
Co-Sponsored by By Hand Gallery and Gather : handmade shoppe & Co:
Featuring poets Michelle Gottschlich, Yalie Kamara, Amelia Martens, and Patsy Rahn with guest musician(s) to be announced

Michelle Gottschlich is a 25 year old poet from Northwest Indiana.  She completed her undergraduate degree in creative writing at Indiana University in 2013.  Her work; centering on female experience, love, and mental health, has appeared in Canvas Creative Arts Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Midwest Trash, EGGS, and Play Dead Press.  Her poetry book Void Sets was published by Monster House Press in 2015.  Michelle works as a server in Bloomington.

Yalie Kamara is a first generation American and native of Oakland, California.  She earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in both Creative Writing and Languages from the University of California, Riverside and a Master of Arts degree in French from Middlebury College.  In the past decade, Yalie has lived on three continents, where she’s been both a student and an educator.  Her writing has been published in Mosaic Literary and Art Journal and the Community College of Vermont, as well as featured on PBS.  Prior to becoming an MFA student, Yalie worked in the service of youth and adults all over the state of California in the areas of educational access, nonprofit management, and community-based art facilitation.

Amelia Martens is the author of The Spoons in the Grass are There To Dig a Moat, a book of prose poems, which was selected by Sarabande Books for the 2014 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature.  She met her husband in the IU MFA program; together they have created a reading series, a literary journal, and two daughters.

Patsy Rahn is a poet and prose writer.  She trained as a dancer in New York City and at the National Ballet School in Toronto.  She worked for many years as an actress in Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles.  Her writing has been published in academic journals and various literary publications. She has given poetry readings in Toronto, Los Angeles and Bloomington.  Recently, she participated in the Writers Guild’s program for the Boys & Girls Club on Martin Luther King Day, and as a poet with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra.  She is a founding member and chairperson emerita of the Writers Guild at Bloomington and works at the IU Art Museum.