LeAnn Lewis
Having dabbled in arts and crafts since I was a child, when I found clay, I found my bliss.
A friend said, “let’s do this pottery class thing in Knoxville for 8 weeks”. At the time I was a quilter and I told her I really didn’t need another habit. A quilter with stashes and stashes of fabric. Hence the habit statement. She said she’d drive the 45 minutes one way, so off we went. She did the one 8 week class and I stayed for 6 years at the Knoxville Arts and Fine Crafts Center. Mainly to socialize, but in clay there is always something to learn. I honed my pottery skills under the tutelage of our teacher Jacqueline Mirzadeh.
After 11 years of pottery my quilting has gone by the wayside. Oh, by the way, I still have all that fabric.
I have always been a doodler so when I developed my technique to transfer those ideas and images to my pottery, I hit a stride. Most of my intricate designs are all free hand drawings, except my birds. For these I have templates that I have created. I look at a lot of my pots and see my quilting past in them.
Most of my work is done on the pottery wheel making smooth vessels that I add color to then carve it away. The pottery term is “sgraffito”.
I love learning new techniques and have recently been learning sculpture from Tina Curry, a fellow Madre. It has been a whole lot of fun and enlightening to see what the clay can do. I can’t wait to see where that leads me. Possibly some sculpture with “sgraffito”.
I have been a member of the Terra Madre-Women in Clay group here in Knoxville, TN for 6 years. I was also accepted into the Southern Highlands Craft Guild in 2019.
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