Our clay community has lost a gem; Adam Nicholas Yungbluth your impact on our community will be felt for many years through all those who you’ve impacted with your talents.
www.northcuttandson.com/obituary/Adam-Yungbluth
An MSU scholarship has been set up in Adam’s name to benefit art students. Please consider contributing. Details HERE.
via THE HINDU:
“Simplicity and vividness were the best attributes to describe her art and ceramics. Simplicity, for her, meant silent sophistication. Nature was her leitmotif. She framed forms through her own understanding of nature and human experience.
A ceramic cat or owl was more than just an artwork for her. She glazed her ceramics in such an inimitable way, giving them evocative rugged and rough surfaces.
Jyotsna behen, as she was popularly called, considered Ira Chaudhri as the Guru of the Indian ceramic movement. In India where a lot of ceramic work has echoes of borrowing/imitation, Jyotsna behen’s intrinsic understanding of the relationship between form and the ferment became her signature.
Her sculpted entities around nature, the spontaneity of clay and the marvels of expression speaking through her plant forms, owls and smiling cats.
Born Jyotsna Shroff in 1940 at Mandvi in Kutch, she lost her father early but her uncle saw her aptitude in fine arts and encouraged her to pursue it.
Her journey at the wheel began in the 1960s in Vadodara. A high priestess of the world of minerals and fire and clay, she looked around her garden at Vadodara for stimulus and inspiration.
Married to celebrated artist and Padma Shri, Jyoti Bhatt, she always maintained that her husband was very supportive and her family played an important part in her achievements.
She studied sculpture under Prof. Sankho Chaudhuri at the famed M.S. University at Baroda and later ceramics at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in the U.S. Returning to India she taught at, and later headed the Department of Ceramics at her alma mater until her retirement in 2002.
Her sensitivity and her distinct sensibility was born of a deep understanding of the arts and crafts heritage of Gujarat. Her journey saw the genesis of a silent yet robust modernist potter, who was at home in the contemporary world and comfortable in her own skin, sharing secrets as she went along.”
Read the full article on her life and work HERE.
via: NCECA
We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Dick Hay, who served as president of NCECA (1978-80). Dick has an extraordinary impact on contemporary ceramics as a maker and mentor. He retired from teaching after 40 years at Indiana State University, Terre Haute in 2006. In a 2014 update to his website, Hay wrote, “I can only add… I have been very fortunate in this journey. I don’t think that I have ever had a life’s plan. And I don’t think that I have asked for much. But I have received more than I could have ever envisioned. It has not been a one-hundred percent positive life. But it has been real close. And now. As a retired person. My life is truly different. I was cursed/blessed to express myself through making objects. And I feel obligated/driven/doomed/guilty if I don’t do this daily. I now work in my studio every day. Maybe for an hour. Maybe for twelve hours.”
Read more about his life HERE
April 08, 1938 – January 25, 2020
Read more about his life HERE.
“It is only when the user feels the presence of the hand of the potter that communication truly exists,”- Warren Mackenzie
RIP Warren Mackenzie, may we all be so lucky as to live to 94 and spend each day doing what we love and impacting the world through our teachings and our creative gifts.
