Charlotte Ownby

Throughout my life, I have enjoyed being outside in natural areas learning about wild plants and animals. I made my first contact with clay as a Girl Scout at age 13, making a small dish by pressing a leaf into a slab of clay. I was fascinated and wanted to do more, but life took me in a different direction, that of science. After many years studying zoology and microscopic anatomy at the University of Tennessee and Colorado State University, I settled into a career of teaching histology to veterinary students, researching snake venom and running the University Microscopy Laboratory at Oklahoma State University which lasted some 40 years. But I never gave up my desire to “play with clay” so when I retired from my faculty position in 2006, I decided to take up potting. Luckily, I had a friend who enrolled me in a pottery class at the Multi-Arts Center in Stillwater, and I was hooked!

After my husband and I built a log home with pottery studio near Chama, NM in 2009, I started volunteering with the Chama Valley Humane Society, and my work in clay really took off. While making approximately eight hundred bowls and mugs over an 11-year period for a fundraiser, and selling pieces in a local shop, I had the opportunity to explore the use of texture, carving, slips, stains and underglazes followed by a wide variety of glazes. Most of my work at this point was functional using a stoneware clay fired to cone 6.

A defining moment in both my personal and clay life was when we moved from Oklahoma to Albuquerque in 2016. I connected with the New Mexico Potters and Clay Artists Association, and everything changed in my studio. I became more interested in artistic pieces, not necessarily functional and with more variation in the making and decorating. Participating in the annual Celebration of Clay has been a driving force for my experimentation and innovation, and the Ghost Ranch Workshops have provided inspiration for making new types of work and new finishes.

Recently, I have been exploring more different shapes and forms and layering glazes to help me better express my view of the natural world, myself and our society.