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 enjoy adding color using underglaze watercolors, painting right onto the drying clay... using swirls of the paints to imitate clouds, forests, lakes or ocean waves. On the bisqued forms, I can draw caricatures of some of my favorite animal life....sweet swimming koi, friendly (and lucky) herons, loving little owls or fantastical (sometimes theatrical) penguins using more 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!