Jerry Maschinot

Atlanta artist and raku master Jerry Maschinot unveils a new direction in his work at his first Atlanta solo show in over a decade. MudFire Pottery Center will host the show, which will run June 5 - June 29. An artist reception and opening party will be held on June 5 from 7-10 pm. Jerry has reached a turning point in his evolution as an artist, and his latest work provides an important glimpse into the next twenty years of his award-winning career.

About Jerry Maschinot

Jerry Maschinot is one of Atlanta's premiere ceramic artists. He has shown his raku-fired work at juried and invitational exhibitions for over two decades, winning numerous prestigious awards along the way. He has repeatedly won the Award of Excellence at the Arts Festival of Atlanta, and has been honored in exhibitions as far away as Kyoto, Japan. Based on his early success, Jerry has been selling out of his studio and to art consultants for some time. The upcoming MudFire show celebrates a brilliant new body of work.

For this show, Maschinot has been exploring elegantly simple new forms - mainly vases and lidded jars. The surfaces are astoundingly rich and inviting, the product of a new range of luster glazes under development since 2001. The movement and saturation of the surface of this work is hypnotizing. It draws the viewer in to handle the piece, turning it slowly around and around, endlessly surprised, delighted and awed.

"This new body of work has been a refreshing change from the laborious and more painterly surfaces which I have worked with over the past fifteen years," Maschinot explains. "I feel renewed and anxious to see what lies around the next bend in this road - my second twenty years."

About Raku

American raku is a dramatic form of ceramic firing originally developed in the United States by master potter Paul Soldner. The pottery is rapidly heated to approximately 1900 degrees and removed glowing red from the kiln while the glaze is still molten and active. The work is then immediately plunged into combustible material which violently ignites as the piece cools, depriving the liquid glaze of atmospheric oxygen for exciting and unpredictable results. Vibrant colors, metallic surfaces, glaze crackling, and smoke absorption are some of the distinct results.