Opening Reception - Friday, January 10, 5 - 8pm Joanne Kirkland and Maggie Jaszczak – The Nature of Things Maggie Jaszczak is a potter and mixed media artist from Ontario, Canada who now re-sides in Minnesota. After completing her undergraduate studies at Kootenay School of the Arts in Nelson, BC and Alberta College of Art + Design in Calgary, AB she received her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 2013. Jaszczak’s functional and sculptural objects are made of earthenware and slip that draw on the quiet, minimal forms of basic function, such as basins, bread troughs, and baskets. Using slab, coil, and mold techniques she makes a simple form, which she smooths and scrapes to articulate handles, edges, corners and rims. Surfaces emphasize the subtle-ties of material, process and firing as the primary decorative elements – dragged grog, finger marks, the layering of slips and terra sigillata, and the rough whites and blacks that come from reduction firing. Joanne Kirkland has worked in ceramics since 1980 making pots in a barn in northern Illinois after graduating from Eastern Illinois University. As of 1984, Madison, Wisconsin has been her home, where she lives and works as a studio potter. Travels and studies in the southwestern United States, Mexico, Japan, and most recently Germany, have been major influences in her work. She uses a wax resist glazing technique where wax is painted on as a first layer of glaze in a design and then resists the next color. Most of her pots are made on the wheel with porcelain clay, sometimes altered by paddling, stretching or adding slabs. She likes the dynamic surface decoration with figurative and abstract imagery inspired by the elements and environment of her daily life.