Sue Tucker - Potter

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I grew up in Georgia and North Carolina where my first encounters with clay were with native clays, which my sisters and I dug from creek banks to make tea sets and small animal sculptures.

 

My formal ceramics studies began at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where I studied hand building, potter’s wheel and glaze chemistry, continuing to work with Georgia red clay. I then worked and taught pottery classes in a Charlottesville, Virginia studio for four years.

 

In 1977, I completed a BFA degree in ceramics at Augusta College, Augusta, Georgia, working with stoneware and porcelain clays and gas-fired and salt kilns. In 1980, I completed an MFA degree in ceramics at the University of North Texas, in Denton, working with sculpture, pottery, smoke-firing and wood-firing kilns.

 

In 1982, I moved to New Hampshire to teach ceramics full time at (then) Plymouth State College. While teaching, I continued my own artistic work in clay, cycling back and forth between functional pottery and sculpture. I became a juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen in 1991. In 2009, I retired from 27 years at Plymouth State University.

 

My studio at home, built in 2009, accommodates my expanded pursuit of the functional forms of pottery in stoneware and porcelain. I make my own glazes and fire the glazed work in a gas-fired kiln.

 

What has always attracted me to functional pottery is that it is made by hands, and it is made to be touched and used by human hands. I enjoy that the forms are “purposeful,” and I want them to be inviting to handle and successful and satisfying to use.  While the forms need to be strong and to be functional, I want them to have an original spirit, with glaze and textural elements adding color and visual interest.