Stephanie Martin

Her greatest desire is to push the limits of the medium, expose the beauty of raw clay, and to leave her audience with a sense of calm and curiosity.

She achieves these goals by creating abstract works that focus on the natural world and emphasize the feminine form. In addition many of these pieces she assembles much like a puzzle, allowing herself and het audience to explore the relationship of lines and connection. 

She works with various clay mixtures - porcelain clay, brown stoneware, black Spanish clay, and paper clay - throwing each piece individually on the wheel, and then altering them to achieve soft, feminine forms. Some clay may be mixed with mason stains while others are left in their raw state, exposing their natural hues. Once dried she fires the pieces in an electric kiln. Some she passes through a second, primitive smoke fire wherein she uses different techniques to obtain their surface design.