Works by Mary Weisgram Available At Gallery 319

Mary has been working in clay for nearly 40 years and selling professionally for the last 30. She was originally from Minnesota where she attended graduate school in Mankato, Minnesota, receiving her MA degree. Mary was the Ceramicist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center during the 70's. She then taught at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Ames, Iowa intermittently for 20 years, while maintaining a studio for her own work. Mary is now the artist in residence at the Creative Artists Studios of Ames (CASA), a non-profit artist's cooperative. Mary works in stoneware and porcelain, making both functional and decorative vessels. Her training as a painter carries over the layering of colors, brushwork and surface design to the ceramic media. Much of her childhood was spent in solitary rambling in woods and fields and this is the source of her current work with organic finishes and naturalistic style. Her style is not pictorial but suggests the sense of wet and dry, water and stone, the light and dark of sunlight breaking in patches on the forest floor, or the leaf stains on sidewalks. She is fascinated with the "found" paintings around us everyday.