Artist Biography: Hoyt has been a maker of one sort or another – potter, professional writer/photographer, with brief detours into restoration carpentry and automobile restoration – since before the life-changing experience of studying ceramics under master potter and arts educator Walter Hyleck in the Berea College Ceramic Apprenticeship program beginning in 1970.
Work as a freelance magazine writer and photographer occupied the biggest chunk of the intervening decades (22 years) closely followed by ceramics, now at 20-plus years.
Since late 2014, Hoyt has maintained a pottery studio at his home in rural Alachua County, where he does high-fire functional and decorative stoneware while sharing a semi-empty nest with his wife, Kim, who is a professor at the University of Florida. They share their country home with a dog, a cat and two horses. They also enjoy sharing five acres of mostly woods with an unknown but significant and growing number of owls, squirrels and hawks, gopher tortoises, etc., who are being squeezed by the appalling development-fueled deforestation of western Alachua County. They enjoy frequent weekend visits from their sons, Ian, who is graduating from UF in May (2019) with a BFA in graphic design, and Aidan, who is a sophomore at UF, following his passion of fiction writing while tolerating, to one degree or another, all the other classes he has to take.
Hoyt formulates and mixes his own unique glazes and clay bodies. Much of the imagery in his larger pieces derives from – and is intended to draw attention to – at risk environments, such as marine ecosystems and polar ice caps. Many large pieces he considers primarily sculptural, but most are functional as well. All Hoyt’s functional work is microwave- and dishwasher and food safe.
Since 2016, Hoyt’s work has been in exhibitions at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lynchburg, Va., Del Ray Artisans Gallery, Alexandria, Va., the Shaped Clay Society at Syracuse University, the Victor F. Keen Gallery at Clay Arts Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada and in an invitational alumni show at Doris Ulmann Galleries, Berea College, Berea, Ky, his undergraduate alma mater.
Two of Hoyt’s pieces are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/philip-childers-861
Hoyt participates in the Gainesville Downtown Festival & Art Show, the Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival, the Art Festival at Thornebrook, and the Winter Fine Arts Fair at Tioga. Locally, in addition to the Artisans’ Guild Gallery, his work is also sold at the Harn Museum Store, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, at the University of Florida, and at the Lanza Gallery in High Springs.
Email: hoyt.childers@cox.net
Work as a freelance magazine writer and photographer occupied the biggest chunk of the intervening decades (22 years) closely followed by ceramics, now at 20-plus years.
Since late 2014, Hoyt has maintained a pottery studio at his home in rural Alachua County, where he does high-fire functional and decorative stoneware while sharing a semi-empty nest with his wife, Kim, who is a professor at the University of Florida. They share their country home with a dog, a cat and two horses. They also enjoy sharing five acres of mostly woods with an unknown but significant and growing number of owls, squirrels and hawks, gopher tortoises, etc., who are being squeezed by the appalling development-fueled deforestation of western Alachua County. They enjoy frequent weekend visits from their sons, Ian, who is graduating from UF in May (2019) with a BFA in graphic design, and Aidan, who is a sophomore at UF, following his passion of fiction writing while tolerating, to one degree or another, all the other classes he has to take.
Hoyt formulates and mixes his own unique glazes and clay bodies. Much of the imagery in his larger pieces derives from – and is intended to draw attention to – at risk environments, such as marine ecosystems and polar ice caps. Many large pieces he considers primarily sculptural, but most are functional as well. All Hoyt’s functional work is microwave- and dishwasher and food safe.
Since 2016, Hoyt’s work has been in exhibitions at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lynchburg, Va., Del Ray Artisans Gallery, Alexandria, Va., the Shaped Clay Society at Syracuse University, the Victor F. Keen Gallery at Clay Arts Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada and in an invitational alumni show at Doris Ulmann Galleries, Berea College, Berea, Ky, his undergraduate alma mater.
Two of Hoyt’s pieces are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/philip-childers-861
Hoyt participates in the Gainesville Downtown Festival & Art Show, the Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival, the Art Festival at Thornebrook, and the Winter Fine Arts Fair at Tioga. Locally, in addition to the Artisans’ Guild Gallery, his work is also sold at the Harn Museum Store, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, at the University of Florida, and at the Lanza Gallery in High Springs.
Email: hoyt.childers@cox.net
