Biography:
I was born in New York City and lived there a short while before moving to the suburbs of NY. Art always played a major role in my life. My mother is an artist and my father was an accomplished wood worker. I went to Kansas City Art Institute for their foundation program and graduated with high distinction from California College of Arts And Crafts with a BFA in ceramics. After graduation I worked in a mental health facility for four years. I then decided to take the plunge and try to support myself with my art and so I entered the world of wholesale craft shows. The wholesale business was very successful for about 25 years until the economic down turn in 2008, where I had to reinvent myself. At that time, my work was low fire tableware, designed by me and slip cast and decorated. At the time of the recession all of our wholesale accounts had dried up, and so, as I had lately discovered the joy of wood firing, my interests shifted in the direction of one-of-a-kind pieces and limited production in the atmospheric kilns. I have both a wood and a soda fire kiln on my property One thing led to another and so we then developed a program to bring ceramic artists to the area by hosting workshops which we’ve been doing at our studio for the last 18 years. Artists from around the world have taught at our studio in Northwest Connecticut. As an artist I still create one-of-a-kind high fire pieces. At this point in my career I do maybe one retail show a year plus our increasingly popular ClayWay, an artist studio tour of northwest Connecticut and beyond. As we unload our kilns the work is then photographed and put up on our Shopify page. I spend winters in Mexico where we work on next year’s workshop programming. While there, I also spend time designing new work and printmaking.
Artist Statement:
My goal is to make unique, functional and lovable pots. Animal imagery underpins all of my work whether animals decorate the plates, bowls, platters and mugs or animal sculptures are assembled from thrown or hand built pieces. I like the fluidity of moving between the two modalities. The tesselations found on the plates were/are designs that I started to develop during the pandemic when everything was so up in the air and unnerving. In retrospect, it was a personal way of containing and controlling (in my head) the chaos that was going on in the world. I immensely enjoyed the long hours I spent in the studio during that time of isolation. As with any art form one idea leads to the next and sometimes my inspiration comes from the previous pieces I’ve worked on and sometimes i turn to ancient pottery to be inspired.This has been my mode of creating through my many years of working with clay. Remembering back to when I made my first piece in pre-school, I remember the feeling of being totally enchanted by the magic of working with clay and luckily for me that feeling still holds true.
Steve Katz studied guitar with Dave Van Ronk and Reverend Gary Davis. There were many other young musicians around Greenwich Village during this time who were as obsessed with American roots music as Steve. Many would look for a common ground in which to play music together and they found the common ground in “jug band” music. Steve and some friends formed the Even Dozen Jug Band and were courted by Elektra Records for whom they recorded an album in 1964. In 1965, Steve joined The Blues Project. They recorded three albums while together in their first incarnation. After the demise of the Blues Project, Steve and a few friends put together Blood, Sweat & Tears. Their second album is still a classic, over 50 years after it was recorded. The group won three Grammies and sold millions of records worldwide. In 1972, Steve began a relationship with Lou Reed that culminated in his producing two of Lou’s albums, both of which went into Billboard’s top ten. After a short stint in the group American Flyer, Steve went on to become Vice President of A&R at Mercury Records where he produced three albums by the seminal Irish band Horslips and then became Managing Director of Green Linnet Records. He then married his one true love, Alison Palmer. Steve’s memoirs were published by Lyons Press in 2015. He is still performing solo concerts and doing book talks around the country.
Alison and Steve live in Kent, Connecticut with their kilns, their dogs Paco and Frankie, their African Grey Parrots, Tutu & KuKu, and the remains of their guinea pig, Sid.
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