Cara Jean Clay

Inspired by Nature’s lush forms, I use porcelain and stoneware to create my own personal garden. Most often I begin on the wheel and then alter the shapes, adding hand coiled leaves, seeds and berries, or suggestions of vines, flowers, bark and twigs. I decorate the forms - inside out and upside down. While slowly drying the layered attachments of coils, swirls and curls, I sometimes add color using underglaze watercolors, painting right onto the drying clay... swirling the paints to imitate clouds, forests, garden greens or ocean waves. On the bisqued forms, I draw caricatures of some of my favorite animal life .... sweet swimming koi, inquisitive big-eyed bluebirds, smiling herons, loving little owls or fantastical (sometimes theatrical) penguins using additional underglaze paints, pencils and pastels.

I adore making Vases and Creamers, Wall Gardens and Vase-Bowls...functional and sculptural, all handmade with love and ready to display in windows, on walls, in fountains or filled with flowers. My favorite saying is "Never Enough Flowers!....Ever!"   And I hope to entice you to look closer at every moving, dancing curl, and to touch the forms! Clay is meant to be touched.

It is a simple, earthy and tactile joy!