Member
Abbey is an Oregon native, a traveler, and a picnicking enthusiast who spends much of her time in search of the planet's finest produce and most beautiful landscapes. She holds a BA in studio art and creative writing from Humboldt State University. Primarily an illustrator, Abbey delights in using her artwork to celebrate the extraordinary qualities of the ordinary, and the loveliness of “in-between” moments.
Member
Karen Good is a founding member of Paonia Clayworks where she has taught hand-building and sculptural techniques, wheel-thrown work, glazing, and firing. Karen holds an MA in Holistic Education from Antioch University/Seattle. She taught for 24 years in public, private and charter schools, including running her own one-room K-8 school for 8 years in Washington State. Her last seven years she served as Art Department Chair at the Orme School of Arizona, teaching ceramics, sculpture, drawing printmaking, and directing the annual Orme Fine Arts Festival. Karen was also a founder of Elsewhere Studios, an artist residency program in Paonia where she served as Executive Director from 2010 to 2018. During that time the program hosted over 200 visual artists, writers, composers, and performance artists from 14 countries and 30 states. Karen has always enjoyed working with her hands creating things- from pots to drawings to building houses. Her particular love is Raku because she loves the process - being midwife to the birth of the pots through the firing process – and the richness of the glazes.
Member
May has always created since very young. Later in life, she studied at the Art Students League of Denver and has presented her creations in The Golden Triangle, Greenwood Village, Evergreen Center for the Arts and various other places on the Front Range. Creating works of oil paint, acrylic, ink, watercolor, pastel and collage most of her work has been centered around the inter-dimensionality of nature; animals and landscapes. Recently; May's pottery creations reflect wabi-sabi – a Japanese aesthetic where the worldview is a definition of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. She also draws inspiration from indigenous peoples and ancient pottery. A native of Colorado, May contentedly resides in rural western Colorado outside of Paonia where she receives inspiration for her life from the animals, insects, organic orchards, beautiful ranch and farmlands, mountains; dessert type adobes, vast countryside; rivers and mountainous regions of the North Fork Valley and night sky.May was one of the two featured artists for June 2021 with an exhibit that is Mixed Media-ist:.titled "No Reservations “. This body of work was all about letting the muse take me by the hand and running through the studio with mud, stone, bone, wood, wire, and glazes—with no answers.”
Member
Naropa Sabine has worked in numerous artistic disciplines, engaging in literary as well as visual and musical formats. Born in Colorado and raised in a remote mountain monastery in Appalachia, he was educated as a painter in Memphis, Tennessee. After receiving a European travel scholarship for museum study, he finished formal schooling in NYC. Subsequently, he traveled throughout the world, read a million and one books, experimented, and worked extensively in video, theatre, music, poetry, and film, while continuing his practice of painting and mixed media assemblage. He has created numerous murals throughout America and showed artwork in various cities. Clay has become an important new medium and has inspired new directions in his work. He still travels widely and has a magic shack and studio in Paonia, Colorado which he purchased from his mother's first husband who painted there for 40 yrs. He looks forward to continuing that tradition. After receiving a European travel scholarship for museum study, he finished formal schooling in NYC. Subsequently, he traveled throughout the world, read a million and one books, experimented, and worked extensively in video, theatre, music, poetry, and film, while continuing his practice of painting and mixed media assemblage.
Member
"Melissa is a lover; a lover of life, a lover of the Earth and a lover of plants. It has been through this love that she found the passion and desire to begin creating one of a kind vessels for her self-propagated house plants. Once this journey started, it only brought more joy into Melissa’s life, taking her down the magical path of working with clay, her hands, and the Earth. Through this process, she has expanded into creating other sacred items such as ceremonial tea or cacao cups, incense burners, bowls and much more. Melissa is also a Certified Sheng Zhen Teacher in the North Fork Valley, specializing in meditation and gentle movements to open the heart and relax the body. She has integrated this practice into her ceramic creations, infusing them with universal love and light. Our hands are very powerful and we can deeply feel, absorb and give energy through our palms. To eat, to drink, and to fill our lives with sacred hand-made objects helps us to integrate presence and awareness into everyday life. If you wish to know more about this work, on or off the wheel, please contact Melissa at Mlrehfeldt@gmail.com.
Member
Pieter strives to live by agrarian poet and essayist Wendell Berry’s maxim: “What I stand for is what I stand on.” His ceramics work springs from his love of place, in particular the arid upland mesas of Western Colorado, from whose rocky soil the earthenware clay composing his latest work was dug. Bespoke work available seasonally, contact pietervanwinkle@gmail.com.
Treasurer
Ivy enjoys creating in all aspects of her life. She finds art as a tool to integrate what she experiences in the outer world with what she knows to be true and significant from within. Ivy was primarily educated through Waldorf curriculum and continued onto university at Lewis and Clark where she graduated with honors in Anthropology and maintained a balance of interests in mathematics, literature, and art. It was at university Ivy began using the wheel to create clay vessels and she has been enraptured with clay ever since. Ivy moved to Paonia in 2021 and immediately joined the Clayworks studio where she quickly became a central member of the collective by taking on treasury responsibilities, teaching her first class, and helping with events. For work and to pursue her other passion--pants--Ivy manages a landscaping crew. Ivy loves how clay is both limitless and bounded, how it requires strength and stability as well as subtle flexibility, and how it is both functional and expressive. Ivy looks forward to a life-long journey of communing with clay.
"Art Washes Away From The Soul The Dust Of Everyday Life" ~ Pablo Picasso Fusing art with usefulness, Rebecca strives to make pieces that align with her mantra, "Everything you touch should feel right to you and reflect a part of your unique personality." As a result of her participation in nontraditional educational opportunities and residencies in unusual art communities, Rebecca has come to view her art through many different prisms - those of the expected, and also those of the unusual, and she continues to surprise and delight the viewer/user as a result of this special background. A part of numerous exhibitions and the focus of several different publications, she has been acknowledged as a special artist by her peers, her clients, and those who continue to collect and use her art. Her work continues to explore, expand and blur the line between functional everyday pieces and the creation of everyday ART.
