Kelly Pawlusiak

Kelly only relatively recently realized that she has been a creator her whole life. She has enjoyed making things since she was a little girl, with crafty pieces around her house, painting furniture, cooking, knitting and more. In 2015, she signed up for her first pottery class and was hooked on the deep dive into hands-on creation of items that can be used every day. She became obsessed, often waking up in the night thinking about how to adjust the position of her hands to change the shape of a pot or how she could utilize some miscellaneous thing in her junk drawer as a tool. She spent hours online scouring articles, social media, and videos for answers.The slab-building style of Kelly's pottery came out of the pandemic. Life made her hobby off and on, though it was calling while spending so much time at home and she had a kiln but not a wheel. It was a real creative struggle because it was not what she wanted to do with clay. But her relentless research found some inspiration and it has been flooding out of her since.

Kelly carves her stamps out of clay, then bisque fires them and stamps the cut slabs before she builds each piece. The tessellated textures are comforting. In other aspects of life, she has really enjoyed spreadsheets and numbers and organizing, so to her, the repeated aligning patterns just make sense. And then each piece is functional for everyday use, which is meaningful to her.