Joy Tanner soda fired pottery
About
Joy has been making pottery for the past 24 years. After a childhood full of creativity, music lessons on the piano and flute, and always exploring the natural world while growing up in eastern Tennessee, Joy redirected her creative focus when she discovered how mezmerized she was with making pottery in the art department in college. In 2004 she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Then she pursued various Resident Artist programs at the Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts in Asheville, NC, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, and the EnergyXChange in Burnsville, NC. In 2007 Joy established her own clay studio near Penland School of Craft in Bakersville, North Carolina. Immersing herself in the beautiful mountains has greatly inspired her work and her life. Reflections of detail and pattern are a distinctive element within Joy’s pottery, and she enjoys getting deep into the creative process with such a responsive material as clay.
Her home studio, Wood Song Pottery is in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains in Bakersville, NC. She teaches pottery workshops, exhibits her work in regional and national galleries, participates in a biannual studio tour with Toe River Arts, the local arts council, and is involved with the Spruce Pine Potters Market, an annual pottery show featuring many of the local potters in the region where she lives. Joy also teaches yoga and enjoys sharing with others the benefits of what she has learned through the practice of yoga.
Artist Statement
While I pay equal attention to form, surface, and detail, my pottery is most noted for its carved patterns inspired by nature. I am just as interested in the way a leaf connects to its stem as I am the folds of a mountain range or bursts of color at sunrise. These reflections I find in nature weave their way into the surfaces of my pots, and accrue a rhythm all their own as they swirl and drape across surfaces, suggesting spider webs, ripples in a stream, or water patterns in sand. Through my regular yoga and meditation practice I have become quite interested with the connection between our body and mind and the forms I create out of clay, or the inspirations I find in nature. Often it feels like the form of the pot swells with breath, like my body in certain yoga poses, or my jar knobs resemble hands reaching up in a sun salutation. The bones of the body, such as the rib cage, resemble the patterned lines and edges that drape over the form of the pot.
My work reflects an awareness of the present moment, resulting in uniquely designed pottery that is just as inviting to ponder and touch as it is to use and share. Firing my stoneware forms in a soda kiln or a wood kiln yields an ever changing palette of natural variations of color. Cradling a cup or bowl in their hands, people feel inspired to bring a sense of awareness and ritual into their lives. Integrating the way I experience the world with the way I design my pottery is essential to my creativity. Whether rinsing garden tomatoes at the kitchen sink, or pausing to study wildflowers along the trail, I believe in taking time to notice the little details of life.