This two-week intensive hands-on workshop will be an immersion into making, thinking and asking questions about utilitarian pottery. Using primarily the potter’s wheel, Michael Connelly and Alleghany Meadows will explore ideas and take students on a journey through various approaches to utilitarian forms and surfaces. They will conduct daily demonstrations, discussions and one-on-one instruction as well as present historical and contemporary examples. Participants will use the two weeks to evolve their personal strategies and aesthetics. Connelly and Meadows will also discuss topics such as sustaining a lively studio practice, social outreach as an artist and considerations when setting up a studio. Students will have the ability to work with both high-fire porcelain and stoneware and fire work in reduction and salt kilns.

Connelly and Meadows will give a public artist talk on Wednesday, June 21 at 7:30 pm in the Bray Resident Center.

Michael Connelly is a studio potter as well as the head of ceramics at Montgomery College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his MFA and BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He has taught and presented lectures and workshops at various venues both nationally and internationally, including classes at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Archie Bray Foundation, Penland School of Crafts, Alfred University, Alberta College of Art and Design, Sheridan College and the Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia, where he was honored with the Walter Gropius Master Award. He is the owner/founder of Bailey Street Arts Corridor. His utilitarian pottery is in the permanent collections of the China Yaoware Museum, the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Ashville Art Museum and the American Museum of Ceramic Art.

To learn more about Michael Connelly, visit his website at www.connellypottery.com.