April 2002

Hi. I'm Susie Fowler, a.k.a. Shade Tree Potter.

         I'm an artist whose primary medium is clay (often with plants, stones and found objects completing the piece). I've been making objects all my life, from twig-baskets and berry-dyed napkins as a child, to mobiles of collected clay pipe stems, ocean-carved sticks and seagull bones assembled in Provincetown, Mass., from beach combings collected at the tip of Cape Cod.

        I'm a native Texan, born in Fort Worth. I graduated from Austin College in Sherman, Texas with a BA in Art, and returned from Massachusetts to Texas to establish Shade Tree Potter studio in Sherman in 1977. My graduate studies at Boston University and independent studies at Cape Cod and Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado, expanded my definition of pottery and created my awareness of clay art. My continuing education through master classes and workshops with world-class ceramic artists keeps me connected with other clay workers from around the world. The boundary between art and craft never existed for me. I was first a special education major who became a painting and drawing major who then embraced clay, transferring my drawing and color interests into the ceramic palette. It was the early 70s and I wanted to make pottery people would use in their daily lives. Throughout the years I've ventured into other areas of design, including space planning and interior design services: using art, plants, images, textures and colors to create soothing environments.

      During my time as lead designer for The Focused Image, I took design projects from concept to space plan, to finish schedule, art and plants. I often built the planters, lamps and "accent pieces" for the lobby, and even arranged the flowers for the grand opening events. It's all design.

      Today I'm living cliffside, above the Pedernales River, and recording the world around me in clay forms I call Harvest Trays and Fossil Forms. I'm tending a 33-acre preserve and watching daily the miracle of Nature. Sometimes I record it directly, as in impressions of the plant life. And sometimes the expressions come directly from my imagination into my hands, accumulated images and icons from the past 30 years of making objects, one at a time, with my own two hands, in clay.

      In 1973 I began making the bowls and planters I called Fossil Forms. These pots are handbuilt using glazed and unglazed inlaid colored clay slabs and coils. I make all sizes from cereal bowls to planters for small trees. The imagery of plant life, strata, landscapes, skyscapes, and cosmic constellations all capture in clay the wonders of our universe. Each is a one of-a-kind art piece, which only comes into full expression when you fill it with your own granola, flowers, fruit, plants, pasta, coins, wine corks, tree, etc. The piece changes with its contents: the interplay of fruit or objects with the colors of the bowl and the light in the room.

      The Harvest Trays are my newest investigation. The concept for these pieces began while I was gathering seed from my wildflowers and collecting them for the propagation I planned to do of the yellow Mexican Hats that grow sparingly on this land. I was also planning a series of children's classes at that time and thinking of how to lead the kids into recognizing the patterns and textures of nature. I began to make impressions of the seed heads and realized how clearly I could capture the fine detail. Teaching always revitalizes my spirit and opens new doors for my own expression.

      The Harvest Trays are slabs of clay, porcelain and stoneware, with impressions and expressions of wildflowers, colored with washes of clear and colored glazes revealing the "drawing" through the layers of glaze. They evoke a fresh quality of snow or frost or fog, the image revealed as if by erosion or evaporation.

Not to copy Nature but to work in its manner.
Inevitably. Essentially.
As each piece I make is alive with the changing life of my hand and mind.

Enjoy the natural beauty.

-Susie Fowler