Jackie Shaw

Jackie Shaw

As a late arrival to pottery, I enjoy combining my lifelong painting career with this recent outlet for my intense urge to create. Sometimes, using painting and carving skills, I create special, personalized pieces. I love simple, honest, classical, and organic shapes; and generally focus on creating functional, one-of-a-kind items within these parameters.

My inspiration comes from love of nature, gardening, and studying ancient pottery and ethnic folk arts during travels in many parts of the world--Far East, Middle East, Europe, North and South America.                                                                                          

For me, claywork is soothing, relaxing and mesmerizing.  When my hands and spirit settle into the rhythm of the rotating wheel, and the clay evolves through my fingers from a clumsy lump into a finished pot, the experience is humbling, and incredibly exciting.  The clay and I each struggle to exert our will over the other, and each yield to the other to allow infinite and sometimes unexpected possibilities, as well as the occasional disaster (when one of us refuses to be controlled)!

My greatest joys in ceramics come from associations with other potters, and from the connectedness with those who enjoy using my pots in their everyday lives.