Ceramics/Pottery
Kimberly Allison, Room 316
@kallisonceramics
kallisonceramics.com
My name is Kimberly Allison, and I’m a ceramic artist and instructor from Salem, Massachusetts. I’ve loved creating with my hands since I was a small child, but I never saw myself as an artist, because art was the stuff of museums, the “look but don’t touch” inaccessible masterworks.
Thinking that traditional art couldn’t be my path, I took a decade-long detour into a career in graphic design and film. But something was always missing, and in a quest to find it, I signed up for ceramics classes in 2012. The rest is history.
In clay, I discovered a medium that celebrates the connection between sight and touch, inviting interaction, not detachment. Pottery is for viewing, yes, but it also craves engagement and is designed to be used, cherished, and woven into our daily lives. It’s a part of our shared culture.
My current body of work celebrates and explores the materiality of clay, its raw, elemental beauty, and its inherent tactile qualities. Iceland’s volcanoes, lava fields, black sand beaches, glaciers, and breathtaking terrain inspire my textures, and I draw form inspiration from both Scandinavian and Japanese design.
For me, the creative journey is as important as the finished pot. I work in small batches of 6-8 pieces if I’m throwing on the wheel or 1-2 pieces if I’m building with coils. My process starts with a sliver of an idea, and then the clay and I work together through several iterations to make the idea a reality. I am also working to develop my own clay bodies and glaze recipes.
I use a wide variety of smooth and groggy dark clay bodies, and my surface texture is mostly achieved through experiments with a myriad of slips, textural additives, and application processes.
Most of my pieces have no glaze on the outside and a quiet, complimentary glaze on the inside, chosen to support the elemental beauty of the raw exteriors.
This is Kim’s 13th year participating in Open Studios, and her 12th as part of the planning team.
