Gay Smith is a studio potter single firing porcelain ware in a soda kiln near Penland, NC. She held artist-in-residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and at Penland School in Penland, NC. Her teaching credits include workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School, the Harvard Ceramics Studio, and the Findhorn Foundation in Northern Scotland.

Her work is represented internationally, was featured on the cover of Ceramics Monthly magazine April 2007, and can be viewed in publications including Making Marks and Functional Pottery by Robin Hopper, and Working with Clay by Susan Peterson. In 2006-7, she received a North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship award.

Gay Smith Artist Statement

To show work in an exhibition titled "American Masters" is an honor. Meeting the challenge of this context, I contemplate the nature of mastery; I imagine intimate, manifest involvement and skill with material and process grown from years of daily practice. And constant questing, or practice, a passionate commitment to experimentation which of necessity includes mistakes, following false leads, and blind turns which feels like the opposite of accomplishment. A balancing act with which one is constantly moving, a hunger which keeps us exploring.

Gay Smith Resume

Education:
1991: Student, Visual Design Program, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Student, Ceramics Program, University of Oregon.
1975: AB General Studies, Cum Laude, Harvard University.

Selected Recent Shows:
Yunomi, AKAR, Iowa City, IA.
The Art of Giving, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA.
From These Hills, William King Regional Arts Center, Abingdon, VA.
Tea, Penland Gallery, Penland, NC.
Mint Museum Potters Market Invitational, Charlotte, NC.
Another Cup, Baltimore Clayworks, Baltimore, MD.
Gertrude Graham Smith, solo show, Red Lodge Clay Center, MT.
Gertrude Graham Smith, solo show, Firehouse Art Center, OK.
Clay, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, Xiem Clay Center, CA.

Career:
1994-present: Studio potter, Bakersville, NC.
1993: Resident Artist, Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT.
1986-1991: Faculty, Potter, Staff Member, Findhorn Foundation, Findhorn, Scotland.
1987: Artist in Residence & Clay Studio Coordinator, Penland School, Penland, NC.
1978-1986: Professional Potter; member and sometime officer of Island Artisans, Inc., a cooperatively owned and operated gallery in Bar Harbor, ME.
1976-1978: Staff Member, Potter, Cook, Findhorn Foundation, Scotland.

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