Andy Bissonnette, a recent MFA graduate from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, is a potter and educator currently residing in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is acutely interested in the union of form, surface, utility, and the relationship between clay body and glaze. He is interested in historical uses of pottery, both narrative and utilitarian, and often looks to the past when conceiving his work. His influences are far and many, ranging from Northern Song Dynasty Celadons to the form language developed by the ancient Greeks, to the modernist aesthetic of the Bauhaus in Germany.

Richard Gruchalla and Carrin Rosetti are a husband-and-wife collaborative team making wheel-thrown and handbuilt Raku-fired pottery. They each bring separate skills to their finished work. Gruchalla is responsible for the wet-working of the pottery; wheel throwing, slab construction, burnishing, or the addition of extra texture and carving. He also does the actual firing of the pieces in the Raku kiln. Rosetti takes care of the detailed glazing of the carved surfaces and collaborates with Gruchalla on forms, glazes, studio output, and marketing. Pieces are sometimes passed back and forth several times before they are completed.

Tricia Schmidt has had a lifelong love of clay and illustration, and she marries the two in her functional and sculptural work. As a primarily self-taught artist, she embraces an aesthetic that is informed by the joy of doodling on a fresh sheet of paper and the satisfaction of a voluptuously curving form. Schmidt’s animals and figures are often self-referential, but universal enough to appeal to a larger audience through the use of her favorite motifs: ambivalent sloths, playful cats, industrious bunnies, malevolent squirrels, and introspective women. She references folklore in her archetypal red birds, symbolizing those who have passed on but are still watching over us.