Work in Process: Brush & Ink on Paper

There is a warmth and immediacy working ink on gessoed craft paper.  The ink is ground from Chinese pressed charcoal sticks and also blended with India ink.  The images are brushed swiftly and dry slowly.  The fluid line buckles the paper creating surprising visual textures. Watercolor has always been a favorite medium for me.  Ink pares the palette down, simplifying form and effort. The technique is immediate, but not easy, the ideas remain odd and provocative. It is rewarding to create volumes of something light to transport after many years of making heavy metal sculptures.

This brushed ink on paper project began a few years ago.  It started with the accumulation of paper from commerce, the movement and stacking of furniture, the anthropomorphic reflection of the furniture, and then, as I re-settled into my home, the evident accumulation of chairs in the basement. (dramatic doom music here.) Why do I have this eclectic collection in my basement, and why am I not the only one with this eclectic collection?

Perhaps the appeal of a chair on the curb that it is easily moved, implicit of a new home, remnant of an old home, wooden remains? An empty chair is a welcome relief from the stand, a moment of relaxation, to take a load off.  Yet these images are loaded. This ordinary furniture, discarded, offered curbside, is domestic and also an expression of style, and culture. Chair is a representation, it is not “a chair”. Chair becomes a departure from reality in order to describe reality; a stand in for the body, in relationship, black white and shades of grey. - Anna Shapiro

Botanical Watercolors

Botanical watercolors and large-scale oils delight in a riot of color and pattern.

I started painting florals in 1967, and still am, knowing this subject matter will last a lifetime. Most of my work is large scale, not only in dimensions of the canvas but in relation to the scale/size of the subject matter that fills the two-dimensional plane. Now, and in recent years I focus on the leaves of variegated plants which offer so many variations of colors and patterns.

This group of paintings include visual thoughts of peace, energy, and silence. I work with the motion, rhythms, and colors that I see and feel in the potted plants in my studio or from photographs I have taken on my travels. The colors may vary from soft and subtle to strong and vibrant, and for me seem symbiotic with the motions of yoga practice. - Janet Alling

Portable Sky

Timothy Welsh is a multi-media artist working in paint, collage, drawing, photography and found materials.

These paintings of the past few years have centered on geometric abstraction, balanced with a recognizable subject matter, often inferred by carefully-chosen titles. By this method, non-objective picture-making crosses over into a 'narrative abstraction', allowing for "a way in" to the image.

The "Portable Sky" pictures, all 6 x 6 inches, are meant to be small sculptures. They can be placed anywhere you might want to be reminded of a blue sky...

Tim enjoys working on a small scale - pattern, repetition and precision all play an equal role in these works.

Studies in Watercolor & Pencil

Observational studies of sea shells in charcoal and pastel inspired groups of drawings and paintings, exploring different forms and becoming increasingly abstract.

These 3 series of quietly surreal watercolors evoke a world of revery, discovery, mystery and beauty. Employing a process of accident, detachment, and observation they welcome the viewer to share the astonishment of witnessing our world: transient, delicate, elusive, shimmering.

Current Works

Light Breeze, 12” x 12”, oil on panel

'My subjects are what you’d find along the New England shore. Water, the rocky shoreline, marshes and the flora that thrives there. Whether studying the water or beach stones, I’m seeking the sense of peace you can find in these places.'

Get Bent

I’ve always been interested in the forces of gravity and how we contend with that ever-present burden through our bodies and our architecture.  I find the forces of compression and tension to be poetic as we think about how our bodies, our societies, and our structures all contend with and reflect upon each other in this ongoing struggle to stand.  Metal is amazing in how it can reach and extend into space and matter — at times seeming to defy the limits of gravity.  I wanted to make work that would be technical in its construction, light in its actual weight, but a contradiction compositionally by so directly representing gravity.

I find the practice of Yoga in its physical and spiritual expression to be an exploration of these forces in order to better learn how to embrace and be empowered in the continual struggles we all face in our lives.  I’m excited to have these works situated in a space that directly is contending with the issues that this work seeks to also contend with.  Society and culture, like steel, are sometimes is tough to bend. But the tools we need can be acquired and many of them are in the teachings Yoga offers.

Will Reeves is an artist, designer, and craftsperson of Providence RI. He studied Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and has been creating both functional and nonfunctional metal works for nearly two decades.  He currently manages and facility and teaches at the RISD. He is also a founding member of the collaborative artist space called the Wurks, also in Providence RI.

Will is proud to have been able to make a place here in the great state of Rhode Island by creating many municipal goods through the Steel Yard Public Projects initiative. Will has notably consulted and fabricated for artist where works have been exhibited all over the US, but notable at MassMoCA, the DeCordova, the ICA, the Shed, the RISD Museum and many more.  Though generous with his skill and knowledge and proud of engaging and assisting with some many artist, Will looks forward to showing and exhibiting more of his own work.

Partner Exhibition:

OBI- THINGS TO CHEW ON: OBSERVATIONS FROM A DOG’S WANDERINGS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

This body of work comes out of the many long walks and talks I have with Will.  He said he was a bit short on work and asked if I could help and as art is no big deal I said I could prop him up a bit.

Often on excursions around the neighborhood I found myself fascinated by all the detritus.  The debris was becoming treasure.  These castaways were artifacts of the new epoch.  I began seeing myself as some ill-fated archeologist in the fever dream of David Macaulay’s Motel of Mysteries, or a more cynical Mark Dion engaging in a dig.  I would laugh and jest to Will about what sort of broken lives these objects came from, the shattered lives these objects had.  I found myself obsessing over these musing.

It didn’t just stop on the street.  I started digging in our own trash, determined to give new life to things.  I felt the need to embed my own mark on these remnants, and in a stroke making them works of art.  I found them now imbued with social purpose and critique. This sedimentary layer that humanity has created will be the only last mark litter paved by debase behavior each of these salvaged objects represent.  It begs the question I ask Tara Donovan and myself:  ‘Does Art Rot?’

Born in New York, Obi splits his time between the City and Providence RI.  Obi dropped out of RISD after one summer of school after read the Calvin Tompkins’s biography on Duchamp.  This pivotal moment led to deep disillusion and an epiphany.  After much brooding Obi proclaimed he is ready to “game” the art world.  A young brash up start, this “snarky puppy” has really made a splash.  As Jerry Saltz said “Obi is uniquely positioned to offer exacting criticism on the human condition… it is a dog’s world we’re living in.”

Currently his practice is more of that of a street photographer wandering and meandering the streets.  Finding those places, those smells, those moments that really tell whole experience of what it means to be human in America.

Space Between

ILindsay Weitzman is a Providence-based artist, designer and yoga instructor here at Jala! She received her BFA from Boston University in 2012, and since then has remained devoted to her creative and spiritual practices, which she feels are deeply intertwined. In 2019, she began building her own printshop and founded Odder Matter Press. She has had the privilege of receiving numerous awards and grants — including from the Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Arquetopia Foundation — and has exhibited her work around the U.S. and in Japan.

Artist Statement:

Lindsay is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in printmaking. Her practice has always been about experimentation with regards to ‘the Self’, the physical and psychological notions of ‘the world’ and human interconnectivity. Rooted in intuition & iteration, her art practice is a continuous material experiment - a physical meditation.

Yoga and other spiritual practices teach us to shift from our awareness away from our Earthly afflictions and towards the Divine, and to explore the spaces between. Yoga can be translated as ‘union’ or ‘to yoke’: a merging of the Self and the Universe; Shiva (masculine energy) and Shakti (feminine energy); creation and destruction; pure consciousness (Purusha) and nature (Prakrti).

Through Yogic practices, we are preparing to draw the energy into and up Sushumna Nadi — the central energetic channel in the body that runs from the Root to the Crown chakra. While Shiva (Pingala Nadi) is associated with the Sun and Shakti (Ida Nadi) with the moon, Sushumna is associated with dawn and dusk — the point in between light and dark, day and night, masculine and feminine.

Space Between, a series of unique monotype prints, is an exploration of non-duality and the transition from Earth to Space, in both a physical and spiritual sense.

Each print is unique and handprinted, created by painting or rolling oil-based ink into plexiglass and then printed onto soaked, handmade 100% cotton paper using a printing press. Metallic pigments add an element of surprise and a lack of control.

Interrelated Connections

‘We are connected in so many ways with lines, squares and rectangles. In today’s geographic andsocio-economic spaces, geometric patterns and shapes are prevalent in technology, urban planning, architecture, infrastructure and agriculture. By creating a visual dialogue, one that works with color to color relationships, compositional harmony, balance, depth, and the geometric austerity of squares, rectangles and lines - these recent paintings seek to reveal an animated, illuminated awareness of our sometimes unrecognized yet interrelated connections.’ — Jim Cain, July 2021

Jim Cain’s paintings create a visual dialogue, one that works with color to color relationships, compositional harmony, balance, depth, and the geometric austerity of squares, rectangles and lines, to reveal an animated, illuminated awareness of interrelated connections. He has exhibited through out New England and Pennsylvania, which includes the Berkshire Art Museum, Pittsfield, MA, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA and the Hood Art Museum, Hanover, NH as well as the Cataurano Gallery, Bentley College, Waltham, MA, Harbor Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston, the Boston Architectural Center, Boston, MA, Mobius Gallery, Boston, MA, the Mills Gallery, Boston, Ma and the Third Street Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. He received an award from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation for achievement in the visual arts, selected as a finalist for the Fine Arts World Center in Provincetown, MA and nominated for a Tiffany Fellowship.

He received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Boston University, Boston, MA and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD.

Jim moved to Rhode Island seven years ago from Boston, MA. The exhibit at Jala is his first exhibition in Rhode Island.

Recent Work

All of these works with the exception of the ceramics and small painting titled Good Grief were made during Covid-19.

As situation after situation unfolds, making art ricochets between being a comforting outlet and a trough for unsettling feelings. I suppose the goal is to be present and work with what arises. The art and yoga practices are overlapping more and more.

My Covid time started with Jala’s Thailand retreat in February. Those remote crystal days were my calm before. The masked journey home through several airports quickly brought me into step with the pandemic and our interconnected global existence.  — Margie Butler, May 2020

Margie began as a plein air watercolor painter while working in New York. She left in 2002 and spent time working as an arts administrator in New Bedford while completing her MFA at The Art Institute of Boston. Margie and keeps a studio in her Providence home. In addition to art, she consults in the fields of brand strategy, research and community engagement.

Cloud Paintings

“...​clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul​” (from the Manifesto of The Cloud Appreciation Society)

I have always been an ardent cloud admirer. I have lived in California under
the monotonous stare of a flat blue sky and much prefer the luminous cloud-filled skies of New England. They are more closely aligned with my temperament. This group of paintings reflects my attempt to capture the silent drama of the atmosphere in which the shapes, colors, and textures of clouds float and shift in varied and unexpected ways.

Attempting to strike a balance between accident and intent, I set out to capture the mood of the sky as experienced at a particular time of day, working directly from nature and usually in places where sky meets water, allowing the physical sensations of the day (wind, temperature, light and shadow) to influence the painting. I find that the medium of watercolor, which is fluid and time sensitive, is especially well suited to capturing the ephemeral nature of clouds. In these compositions I have deliberately omitted any reference to the ground below, allowing the clouds themselves to take center stage.

Born in Bremerhaven, Germany in 1961, Jennifer Becker is a painter and graphic artist who lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. After completing her BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1985, she earned a Certificate of Advanced Study in Painting and Printmaking, also from UCSC, in 1986. Jennifer worked as a learning specialist for twenty-five years while raising a family in Providence. Since 2016, she has devoted herself to painting and drawing full time.

Becker is inspired by the natural world and is especially interested in places where human infrastructure overlaps or interferes with it. After years of teaching students who think and learn in atypical ways, she is also fascinated by the endlessly strange human brain. A traditionalist at heart, Becker challenges herself to work from life or memory.

New Drawings

I find that through the act of drawing I am able to pursue fluidity, to experience the spontaneity of line, shape, and color, to move at my own pace. These drawings came to be about finding a sense of balance, a place where things feel right and unfold slowly. Through variations in hardness and softness of lines, juxtaposing sharp and smooth shapes, and working with negative and positive space I worked toward this sense of equilibrium in hopes that the result would bring some sense of peace.

Emily Martin is a southern New Jersey native living in Providence, RI. She studied photography as an undergraduate at Stockton College and has since worked in the mediums of photography, design, craft, textile, and writing in her personal creative practice. 

Glasses & Grasses

I am interested in exploring how order and beauty relate to peace of mind, through my art.  This interest comes out of a need to organize and measure my own life with care, tenderness & vulnerability.

I’m interested in how much can be seen when almost nothing is there.

The quest for stability in a world of movement and change is something I aim to address through photography, drawing, paper weaving and painting. I’m engaged in the dialogue between these mediums and how they enhance each other and can express the same sentiments in totally different ways, yet through a consistent way of seeing. I often feel that everything is loud, big and coming at me quickly, making me feel fragile as if I could disappear.  I reference that feeling through all of these mediums, over the past 35 years of art making.

I see the cycle of the present slipping into the past and that fluidity as visually poetic; capturing moments that almost don’t exist.

Ruth Lauer-Manenti received a BFA in painting from The School of Visual Arts in NYC and an MFA in drawing, printmaking and painting from the Yale School of Art, where she later taught drawing and printmaking. She also taught drawing, painting, and printmaking at Dartmouth College. Ruth’s work has been exhibited at the Bill Maynes Art Gallery, the Lower East Side Printshop, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Paula Cooper Gallery, The Griffin Museum of Photography, Dartmouth College and Le Salon Vert in Geneva, Switzerland. Ruth was a recipient of the 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts photography grant.

Ruth’s work has been collected by the New York Public Library as well as many private collections including Lois Conner, Louise Fishman, An-My Lê, Frances Barth, Bruce Gagnier, Sylvia Mangold, Seane Corn, Dan Walsh, Chris Martin, Connie Hansen and Russell Peacock.

En Plein Air
Block Island

“These days, as time allows, I am drawn to the sea, to bask in its restorative powers. I was raised on the water, the daughter of a sailor, and have always had an emotional response to the sea's energy. I paint from life, plein air, in locations which are imbued with peace and tranquility. In response to the elements, awash in color and light, I work to express this feeling of calm inspired by nature. My paintings are studies, impressions of a day, a location, a time of year, a moment, a memory."

Recent Collages

“This collection of collage paintings began with some trimmings from some larger abstract works I’ve been making recently. I have been collecting these “outtakes” and thought I’d save them for some smaller pieces. Instead of pouring more paints onto them in layers like I normally do, I began instead to use collage to create dreamy, playful landscapes and vistas.

My work is very process driven -- for me, the joy in making art is witnessing the unfolding of imagery though expressive gestures using a variety of tools. I particularly like squeegees, spoons, and scrapers. With these pieces, it was fun to add to the painted backdrops, creatures, characters, and all manner of objects in a more methodical and planned way. I think there’s something mysterious, magical, and light-hearted about this group of paintings.

I’m a long-time yoga practitioner, and feel like art making has similar qualities as doing yoga. As an abstract painter, there is an emphasis on creating forms and manifesting gestures in a variety of colors. Spontaneity is a big part of my work, but there is attentiveness, precision and focus as well. At its best, the process of making is deeply embodied, can offer other ways of seeing, and can be a transcendent experience. The end result just follows. For the most part, there is no real goal or specific picture in mind. It all just comes as part of the path of making – a fluid, mindful process that goes beyond the everyday."

An Li Liu was born in Guelph, Ontario Canada and lived in Toronto for over a decade before moving to the US. She resided in Boston, MA for several years, and then moved to Berkeley in 2014. She attended the University of Toronto majoring in Cinema Studies and Religion. An Li also studied New Media Design and worked in the industry as a web and graphic designer. She is a traveller at heart having traversed much of South and South East Asia where colors and energies are very potent. An Li delved into yoga practices with a special interest in Buddhist philosophy and then became a yoga instructor herself several years ago, and taught in the Boston area. While An Li took formal art classes in University, she is mainly a self-taught artist with many influences — everything from sublime landscapes and atmospheres to city energy and our shared existential wonders and woes.

www.anlistudio.com

Believe In Now

"I paint my daily existence - flow, interruption, luminous moments and countless pivots.Ideas oscillate amidst the accumulation of color, shape and gesture. I allow myself to roam visually seeing which forms and relationships call out. My wish is to paint where the felt and the formal merge. Much like my yoga practice, the journey is one of continually starting over. Locating myself anew with what each day holds."

Margie Butler is a painter whose creations span plein air, abstracts, collage and painted objects. She has exhibited in Providence, Cambridge, New Bedford, Connecticut and Keene Valley, NY. Margie completed her MFA at The Art Institute of Boston and keeps a studio in her Providence home. In addition to art, she consults in the fields of brand strategy and community engagement and practices Chinese foot reflexology.

inmystudio.popslice.com
curated by Bristol Maryott

New York

This installation of functional ceramic pieces is presented as an exercise in iteration and accumulation. Over the course of the next two months, the shelves will gradually fill with vessels that change incrementally from piece to piece, the spacing between them likewise intermittently expanding and contracting. The work embodies the concept of spanda as framed in Tantra yoga philosophy. This Sanskrit term has as its root spadi, meaning “to move a little,” and is used to describe the microcosmic pulsation of universal energy made manifest in tangible form. The installation mirrors this essential dynamism of stillness, potentiality poised in the contained space of each vessel. 

Kelli Rae Adams utilizes clay in various states of permanency—sometimes employing additional materials—to create both functional objects and installation-based works that examine prevailing economic systems and probe our relationship to labor, currency, and value. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally in venues such as the David Winton Bell Gallery (Providence, RI), the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), the Museum of International Ceramic Art (Denmark) and the Contemporary Urban Centre (Liverpool, UK), and she recently completed a residency in the design studios at Vista Alegre in Portugal. Her study of ceramics began in Japan, where she apprenticed over a period of five years with Tetsuro Hatabe, a master potter in the Karatsu tradition. Kelli holds an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Visual Arts and Spanish from Duke University and has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher and a longtime student of contemplative traditions.

www.kelliraeadams.com

Transformative Winters

Max Ascrizzi believes in the seed, in the sleeping ember, in things just out of sight, unseen, the hidden forces beneath the surface. He believes in the homologous relations (in the often divided view) of Humanity and Nature.

Born in 1971 to Artist parents, Max Ascrizzi was raised in Freedom, Maine, a small town, just inland from the coast. Max basically grew up between the outdoors (in the woods that surround the house and gardens that his parents built by hand) and his Father's shop/studio. It was knowledge acquired in these two places that taught Max all the skills he uses in the making of art and furniture. He has designed and made furniture which he has shown in galleries and furniture shows, has taken commissions to design and build original pieces. He has also produced several multi-media performance pieces, and has shown his art in group and solo shows.

Life Lines

Fritz Dumville is a sculptor and graphic artist who follows the archaic language of line and form; laid down before the first alphabet, untainted by intellect, and vessel of pure feeling.

Life Lines features Dumville's composite prints and selected works of sculpture. The liveliness and sensitivity of Dumville's work visualizes a depth of feeling found in both the prosaic and profound.

Fritz is Detroit born and Providence based, with decades of experience in teaching and editorial illustration. 

"All his figures are very human, touchable, connectable, fragile, and yet very strong at the same time. Fritz shows their vulnerability and beauty in everyday moments, movements, and encounters. There is something subtle and deep within his perception of bodies, the lives of different people and their interconnectedness. Sometimes his figures are humorous, like birds reading news papers. Sometimes you see sobbing girls, showing strong emotions. 

In the Bhagavad Gita it says, that through the practice of yoga, we learn to see the divine spark in all beings and at all times (BG 6.29). Fritz captures these divine sparkles beautifully in his art works and in all the beings he brings to life. Being close to Fritz's art you can feel their love and connection. 

Meister Eckhart once said, that the most important person in your life, is the person right in front of you right now. Fritz treats his figures exactly like that. They form out of clay or with a pen on a piece of paper right in front of him, in that special moment. They come to life with with love, beauty and Fritz' great sense of humor. " Dutzi King

Memories In Indigo

Riley will be presenting a series of new works that reflect on the transformative properties of water.  Using paper and a dye bath of natural indigo, Riley is seeking to realize the dual nature of water as a constructive and destructive force by finding a point of balance between these forces.  The paper, as a result of its interaction with water, becomes a memory, enriched by the calming blue depths of natural indigo.

This series of works stems from Riley’s recent work in textiles, in which he has methodically deconstructed blue jeans inherited from his father.  Working with inherited clothing has brought his attention to how memory is preserved and communicated through material and we as humans embed our own personal narratives into objects.

Sean Riley lives in Providence, RI and works form a studio at the Hope Artist Village in Pawtucket, RI.  He has just been awarded a 2017 Fellowship in Crafts for his work in deconstructed denim from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and this past spring he was a resident at The Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, LA.  Riley is a new and enthusiastic yoga student at Jala Yoga & Arts. 

From One to Another
New Sculpture & Embroideries

The sewn images and delicate sculptures of S. Hollis Mickey are evidence of ritual transformations. Through slow, careful processes, simple materials become charged-- maybe even magical-- objects. 'From one to another' brings together sculpture and embroidery from the past two years, including many new pieces which have not been previously shown. Much of the new embroidered work was created over a two-week artist residency at Penland School of Crafts in the mountains of North Carolina.

Recent Work

Having taught yoga for many years, Stephen Bethel brings the yoga teacher's gaze to the weight, balance and lift of the poses in his drawings. Having practiced yoga for many years, his body knows these poses by feel, from the inside. In the act of drawing, Stephen lets his hand be guided by his outer sight and inner sight together. The plaster pieces give a look into a longtime exploration of rounded and folded picture planes. Stephen Bethel studied fine art at Yale University, where he was also introduced to yoga. The two practices have formed an intertwining path.

Drawings & Wall Shapes

Drawings and wall shapes is an interpretation of the different components of yoga—of mental and physical aspects. The process of making these drawings is slow and meditative. Each line builds upon another and ends in a culmination of thoughts. The wall shapes reflect fluidity, balance, and playfulness.

Zach Martin is an artist from New jersey currently living in Rhode Island. He works with many materials, often developing unique ways to finish and form them. His objects are thoroughly worked and rehearsed, requiring constant attention until they are prepared and ready to view. Zach and his wife Emily Martin also started Interior Theatre, a creative practice playing with the character of objects made for the home, the body, and spaces in between.

Nidus

The body of work entitled Nidus (“nest”) is a single chapter in a vade mecum, and represents the culmination of a process sparked by Antonio Forte’s fascination with physics and Zen Buddhism. Japanese Zen calligraphic techniques (like the gesture used for the ensō, or “circle”) were used to create oil paintings and ink drawings. Realizing that light (color) and sound (music) are both waves of energy moving through a medium, being perceived by the human physiology and psychology, Antonio wrote a physics formula to translate the frequencies of light in the colors of paint into frequencies of sound. These frequencies were then used to create musical compositions.

Antonio Forte studied Fine Art at SACI in Florence, Italy. He holds a BA in Music from American University, in Washington, DC, where he also studied Sculpture. Antonio is on faculty at the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School where he teaches music composition and piano instruction, and teaches 1st through 8th grade music at Quest Montessori School in Narragansett, RI. He resides in Providence, RI, and is a member of The Wurks.
Antonio uses the vade mecum as a vehicle for carrying out visual and sonic processes which examine the minute and fleeting intersections between temporality and spatiality. These intersections are what one may call “moments,” and are instances of change in both time and space. The vade mecum, or “go with me” in Latin, is a personal reference book that is regularly carried around by a person, and is the conceptual precedent and starting point for most of Antonio’s work. Each drawing, painting, sculpture, or musical composition he considers to be a single word, sentence, page, or even an entire chapter, within the confines of a larger entity that is both introspective and interpersonal for its creator.

2 In 1 Clay Paintings

Kate Champa has been a ceramic artist and teacher for many years. The presence of the ocean in Rhode Island and the many moods, colors and terrain variations often inform her work. She loves color and form and the various interactions (sometimes intentional, sometimes fortuitously accidental) that occur between them. Animals in their infinite variety and capacity for joy are very important to her and she enjoys capturing their playfulness in clay. The perception of nature starts her own energy and creativity, the work finds its completion through the fire energy of the kiln.

As yogis we understand our own fire energy: the alchemical processes of yoga use heat, breath and intention. This tapas transforms our bodies. Physically, we become firmer yet more supple, but the most profound changes occur in our subtler energies. We refine our energetic, emotional and intellectual bodies allowing our prana or life force to move unimpeded through our system. This free movement of energy helps us to feel more expansive, spacious and at ease. Our bodies become vehicles for intention and consciousness. The transformation of unformed clay into a ceramic artwork is also a process of tapas. The heat of the kiln and the vision of the artist forms the work – an artistic expression visualizing intention.

Kate Champa has a Master’s Degree in Art History from Harvard and later attended RISD as a Special Student in Ceramics. Kate lives in Providence RI with three cats. Animals in their infinite variety and capacity for joy are very important to her.

She has been a member of The Foundry Artists’ Association for 25 years. In 1997 she, with a group of local ceramic artists, started Raku Rhody-o, A FireArts Festival in downtown Providence. Under Kate’s coordination, Raku Rhody-o was for eight years a successful and exciting contribution to the R.I. art scene. With her raku kiln she has taught the ancient Japanese art of Raku firing at many high schools in Rhode Island.

Kate is included in the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts list of Artists in Education. She is always available to teach ceramic workshops in schools and for other groups. Her work may often be seen at South County Art Association, other local galleries, and every December at The Foundry Show at the Pawtucket Armory Art Center.