Welcome to Artphoenix Pottery
 

quote of the day

To be an artist is to believe in life.

(Joan Miro)

 
Artist Profile: Rebecca Faust Lynch works from a studio in her Midlothian, Virginia backyard, where she can sit at her potter’s wheel and see her two boys playing in the family living room. Her work is mostly functional stoneware because she believes in the significance of art in the everyday, and knows the pleasure that a hand-thrown piece of pottery can give to the person holding and using it. Her pottery features slip-trailing and textures as it displays her sensitivity to nature forms and repeating designs on items which are meant to be used and enjoyed. Rebecca grew up in the mountains of north-central Pennsylvania, where she spent most of her time filling her eyes with the outside natural work, filling her hands with any and all art projects, and filling her head with the fantasy world that a wonderful novel can create. Education She received an art degree from Penn State University in 1985 in fiber arts, and pursued her art education at a folk school in Denmark, and in tutelage in Wales, as well. In her twenties, she attended Virginia Commonwealth University where she received another Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Teaching in 1992, in order to pursue what she had always considered her second love, literature and writing. After fifteen years in both public and private schools as an English teacher, tutor and published author, she returned to the art world as a potter. She supplemented her art knowledge with in-depth ceramics coursework from John Tyler Community College in Richmond where she studied with a talented potter and teacher, Denise Hennig. Pottery Artphoenix pottery is a mid-range stoneware that is fired at cones 5 or 6, to bring out the traditionally muted colors of classic stoneware pottery. Practically speaking, all Artphoenix pottery is functional and durable, as well. It is food-safe, and can be put into the dishwasher, microwave or oven. (Note: pottery does not like to be “shocked,” so place your cooking pottery in a cool oven to start, and then turn on the oven so that the pottery can heat slowly, along with the food it holds.) NEW STYLE-- NERIKOME!! Recently, I have fallen in love with a difficult style of pottery design. Nerikome (or “Neriage”) is an ancient Japanese decorative technique which involves stacking clay to make intricate repeating designs, then cutting through the cross section to get slices of the pattern. These slices can be attached together or applied to other clay surfaces. Nerikome is an exciting and exacting way to combine my love of designing with wet colored clays rather than with glazes, and my interest in repeating patterns. Working in this technique is a slow and sometimes frustrating way to create the functional pottery which I love. Having to design a longitudinal pattern whose design will be sliced horizontally is a wonderful challenge. The process requires me to slow down in the studio, as no one part of the process can be rushed. From coloring the clay to stacking the colors in rolls or “canes,” to slicing the designs, to combining different canes and colors, to creating a 3-D form with the slabs, to allowing slow drying, to firing, to glazing, and then--at last!--to the finished product, I am completing hooked. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:12