Artisans' Guild Gallery

A source for handmade art and gifts by Gainesville area artists since 1970

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Kate Shakeshaft Murray

Pottery

Artist Statement

I make pots because pottery is firmly rooted in our daily lives; humble or proud, pots answer our needs for practical containers, for formal beauty and for carriers of personal meaning.

The pots I make are most often intended for use with food and drink, to decorate the table, or occasionally for funerary purposes. I try to make them as handsome as I can; for me that means elegant in form and sumptuous of surface. They are inspired by historical pottery that I admire, for example classically elegant Song Dynasty Chinese porcelains, rotund Tang Dynasty covered jars, or pitchers and ewers with extended spouts of Mediterranean cultures. I do like to embellish form to add movement or sensual life to these domestic objects, as with the paddled and cut feet and knobs on some pots. These feet/knobs can elevate or frame the forms, and at the same time remind the viewer that the clay that is now hard was once soft.

The glazes I choose tend to give color or textural variation to the surfaces of the pots, by themselves according to thickness or layered over each other. As the molten glaze moves a little in the heat of the kiln, gravity plays a part in the decoration of the surface and leaves a record that the glaze too was once fluid. Through trial and error I have discovered glazes that, combined, transform into distinctive third surfaces. Some of these surfaces suggest watered silk, fur or even feathers, inviting metaphors about costume. Some glazes are handsome side by side but not layered over each other, so I take pains with wax resist and fettling knife to keep them apart. Every time we fire the glaze kiln we test glazes, so the repertoire of colors, textures and interactions is always changing.

Artist Biography

Kate Shakeshaft Murray has an M.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Florida, a B.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Iowa, and a B.A. in English from Grinnell College. Between degrees she worked for five separate production potteries in Vermont, and afterwards taught ceramics at Francis Marion University in South Carolina. In 1997 she founded "Round Earth Studio" with her husband Don Murray in Gainesville, Florida, where she has been making pots, striving for elegant forms with sumptuous surfaces. She has exhibited nationally; her work is represented in books and in corporate, museum and numerous private collections. In 2002 Kate was presented at the NCECA* annual conference as an Emerging Artist.

*National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts

To see more of Kate's pottery, visit www.silverhawk5.com/murray

Artisans' Guild Gallery • Millhopper Square Shopping Center • 4201 NW 16th Blvd. • Gainesville, FL 32605

Phone: 352.378.1383 • Gallery Hours: 10 AM to 7 PM Monday through Saturday, 12 noon to 5 PM Sunday