About Suzanne:
Suzanne grew up in Wisconsin, in a family of bird-watchers and botanists. She received a degree in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then moved to Charlottesville to pursue a Master’s Degree in English at the University of Virginia. She met her husband, Matthew, while in graduate school. She spent 13 years teaching English as a Community College professor in various colleges in the Virginia system, but during that time, she was also taking pottery classes and apprenticing with Tom Clarkson. While still teaching full time, she and Matthew purchased an 1890’s house and barn in Earlysville, and renovated the barn into a pottery studio and gallery, which they named Mud Dauber Pottery after all of the mud-dauber wasp nests they had to clean out of the attic. Mud Dauber Pottery officially opened in 1997. By the year 2000, Suzanne could no longer keep up with demand for her pottery, so she quit teaching and settled into work as a full-time artisan. She has shown her work at many high-end juried arts festivals, is represented in galleries across the country, has her work featured in Arts and Crafts Homes magazine and The Artful Home, and is a member of the Association of Virginia Artisans.
Suzanne and Matthew live near the studio in Earlysville, with their two dogs, a black lab, Forest and a Havanese named Chloe, and occasionally with their son, Abe, when he’s back home from archeological digs. Matthew owns and runs Arterra Design and Construction, a design-build firm emphasizing energy efficient fine custom homes.
Growing up, my family ran a land conservancy in Wisconsin. My entire extended family were comprised of bird watchers, botanists, plant pressers - I learned early how to scientifically pay attention to nature, but my path was always more artistic. I couldn’t do what I do without paying close attention to botany and the rhythms of the natural world. When I wild-forage, I never destroy the root structure and I only take specimens when I find them in abundance, with a heart toward minimal disturbance.
For awhile, I thought it was only responsible to source invasive species for my work, but a Native American woman told me, “there are no invasive species, just misplaced relatives.” - that has stuck with me and today I incorporate both native and invasive species, as I can find them on my walks around Central Virginia.
Process, Methods, & Materials:
Each of my botanical pieces begins with a walk in the mountains and woods of Central Virginia where I gather wild plant specimens. All of my pieces are wheel-thrown using a buff-colored stoneware clay body. I press plant specimens into the wet clay, and then pull the specimen off, leaving an accurate fossil impression which gives me a template for glazing. I use a churchkey to make the repetitive point pattern at the rims and bases of some of the pieces, pressing one point at a time, free hand.
Knobs, handles and feet are hand pulled from stoneware. People often mistake my handles for wrought iron, but they are clay.
I use a combination of my own glaze recipes and commercial glazes. The glazes I mix myself include a green copper ash, an amber celadon, a blue celadon and a temmoku black. I use a variety of techniques to glaze each piece, including waxing, dipping, wiping and brushing. I sponge a red iron oxide wash over the point pattern and any unglazed areas.
I fire my pieces in one of two electric kilns to cone 05 for bisque and cone 7 for glazing. Bisque firing takes about 12 hours and glaze firing takes about 8-9 hours. The pieces sit in the kilns to cool for two days after the firing is completed. This helps my green glaze develop a fine pattern of crackling, which resembles old Chinese celadons.
The whole process takes three to six weeks. I lose a number of pieces to cracking, warping, or breakage at various stages of making, and to glaze faults in the firing. The pieces that meet my standards after all the firings are completed are those that I present to you in my gallery, at shows, and on this web site.