Details

Social Media

My Ceramics

About Me

Introduction	I’m Carolyn Parker. I’m from the Midwest of the US. I like to handbuild – slabs and coils. I work, I’m a mom, wife and I play in clay. Not all in that order. I work in clay for myself. I have a day job that pays the bills. I sometimes donate my work for charity events at my office and my husbands clients events. I blog a little.
What I Love about Ceramics	I like the community and the chance to explore and play with different clays, forms, glazes and techniques.
How I started with ceramics	I took some evening courses while I was in high school and then came back to ceramics later in life. After some health issues, a surgeon suggested I start doing things for me. As part of a women’s group, I attended a session from Gayle Gaddis who wrote a book. She talked about designing your own life and I took it to heart. I started looking for continuing education classes and found a community college.
What inspires me	I like new challenges and ways to innovate and express my world.
What I'm working on at the moment	With Covid, I’m limited in my options so I’m exploring underglazes, mishima, sgrafitto and anything I can do at home with coils and rolled slabs.
My Artist Statement	My day job quantitative so I am sometimes inspired by mathematical constructs like a fibonaci sequence. My husband is an architect and I steal from his toolboxes. Early on I got a book on chaos theory which is an interdisciplinary theory stating that, within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization. Then I look at my garden and I see those patterns in ferns, flowers and I get a little obsessive. I painted before I worked with clay. My teacher calls me the painter. If I’d summarize my work in one work it would be curious.