Handwork Member
Pottery
by
Colleen McCall
Colleen McCall is a potter, painter and sculptor. She has never settled for very long in any one discipline but rather chooses to combine her interests through her ongoing investigation with ceramic arts. At the age of 18, before entering college as a painting major, she took a summer job as a scenic artist. She rendered awesome full-size theater backdrops with rotten house paint in a sweltering downtown warehouse in her hometown of Kansas City. The inane pursuit of dimensional illusion pushed her to pursue the reality of three-dimensions. She never wanted to touch, mold and experience space more than after that summer. Such an opportunity presented itself in a college ceramics course. Sculpting with clay satisfied the need for immediacy.
A trip to Italy during the summer of her senior year inspired her to study the human figure. In graduate school, Colleen began swimming and dancing to source her own experience of movement and form in her life-size ceramic sculptures. She continued to work with figure for the next three years while living and working in Boston. Since the advent of her "living sculptures", also known as her children, she has had the opportunity to explore functional ceramics. She began making pots for Olive and Abel to justify keeping her hands dirty. While her husband pursued his Doctorate in Philosophy, she was an adjunct professor and part-time potter. Currently, Colleen teaches ceramics classes at a local art center creating vivid experiences for her students to appreciate art and develop their skill. The new clays and glazes have challenged and inspired her to explore many different methods of construction and finishing techniques which she has assimilated into her own highly decorative style. With the introduction of a palette of bright colors, she is painting once more. Colleen McCall lives, works and plays in Elmira, New York.
