"I revel in the moments of uncertainty as I close and open kilns...Throughout the process of making, I play with the ratio of beauty to grit."
Lauren Mabry (b. 1985) is a ceramist whose "dimensional paintings," as she describes them, play with form, texture, color, and scale. Both risky and methodical, her highly expressive, colorful work—painted with glazes she mixes from raw materials—blurs the boundaries between ceramics, abstract painting, and sculpture. A 2014 residency at Mission Clay Products in Arizona has allowed Mabry to explore large-scale painted ceramics, opening her practice to the challenges of a "canvas" that weighs nearly a ton and stands ten feet tall. In 2014, she received an Emerging Artist award from the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts, and a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Independence Foundation. Her work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions at The Clay Studio, Philadelphia; National Council on Education for Ceramic Art, Milwaukee; Harvard University; Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh; and The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, among others. She holds an MFA in ceramics from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Currently a resident at The Clay Studio, where she also serves on the Board of Directors, Mabry will be a resident artist this fall at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China.
