Judith Duff is welcomed to Bulldog Pottery as our special cousin in clay for 2012
Short Biography
Judith Duff received her degrees in Biology and Painting from Wesleyan College in Macon, GA. Since 1991 Judith has been a full-time studio potter in North Carolina. She has studied throughout the United States and Japan and fires primarily with wood using her Train Kiln built in 1998. In the fall of 2005, she built a traditional anagama kiln with Japanese potter Shozo Michikawa and student participants. She has attended the International Workshop for Ceramic Art (IWCAT) in Tokoname, Japan. In 2004, Judith made her fourth trip to Japan where she spent two months making and firing pottery and participating in exhibitions. That same year she received a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council to research Japanese Shino clays and glazes and attempt to duplicate them using local materials. On her most recent trip (2008) she continued her research with the help of two well-known Japanese Shino potters from the Seto-Mino area, Tateki Kawaguchi and Shotaro Hayashi. She has served as juror for the “Feats of Clay” in Lincoln, California. She curated the “Architectural Echoes” Exhibition at the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design and "Soft Beauty of Traditional Shinos: Momoyama Era" for Concord University. Also, Judith has served as a panelist at the past three International Wood Fire Conferences. Collections include The Mint Museum, Icheon World Ceramic Center Museum, Tokoname Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Kasper-Hansen Ceramic Collection. Her articles have appeared in Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter , and The Log Book, and her pottery was featured on the cover of Clay Times , a national ceramics magazine. Judith has taught workshops throughout the United States and in Japan, including Penland, Odyssey Center for Craft, Mudfire, and University of Arkansas. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at juried and invitational shows including the 2001 American Shino Exhibition, Babcock Galleries, New York, the Smithsonian Craft Show, and the Mint Museum Potter's Invitational.
Artist's Statement
I will try to speak of the beauty of shapes… They are not beautiful for any particular reason or purpose, as other things are, but are eternally and by their very nature beautiful and give a pleasure of their own quite free from the itch of desire…
Socrates ~ in the Philebus of Plato
Since 1991, when I became a full time studio potter, I have watched my ideas come to life through my work with clay. My pottery begins as wheel thrown and hand-built forms that are altered in various ways to make each pot distinctive and unique. Most pots are wood fired in either my Train kiln or Japanese style anagama to achieve a variety of natural ash and shino-glazed surfaces. The organic shapes and surfaces of my compositions are strongly influenced by my degrees in biology and painting.
My goal as a potter is to communicate my vision through the strength of the form. I work to create beautiful, functional pieces while seeking individual avenues for self-expression. I am not afraid of failure and I experiment continually with new ideas. Always growing through change, I value the unique and the unusual.
I want my creations to be used and enjoyed daily. As someone cradles a tea bowl in their hands or arranges food on a hand thrown platter or creates a flower arrangement in a vase with a natural ash surface, I like to think that I touch them in some way. I hope they are encouraged to rejoice in the world around them and to see that world imaged and celebrated in the shape of a simple pot.