The Nest Gallery at Clay & Company...

Andrea Kielpinski is a painter, photographer, and chameleon. Her work reflects her eclectic journey: artist to engineering researcher to therapeutic musician to artist. Andrea’s practice is grounded in formal arts studies (School of the Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University Music School); Asian calligraphy training; and her work in molecular physics and transfer phenomena. Expressive faces, textural abstraction, and close-ups of the everyday are recurrent themes united by her urgent sense of the hidden, the overlooked. Andrea’s painting processes of veiling and uncovering express the complexity of these half-hidden meanings. Recently she’s returned to a seemingly contrasting mode: the stark minimalism of black-and-white photography. Both require acute observation of the present moment. Andrea recently completed an artist residency at Chateau Orquevaux’s International Artist Residency Program in France. Her work is carried in the Chicago area at Clay & Company (Deerfield) and at the Central Arkansas Collective Gallery near Little Rock, Arkansas.

Website: https://www.andreakielpinski.com 

IG: @this_one_precious_life

FB: Andrea Kielpinski Fine Art

Claire Willis first touched the clay on a spinning potters wheel at the Rochester Folk Art Guild in upstate NY when she was 16. Her love of clay and molding began much earlier sculpting figures of animals as a child, but found full expression when she discovered the richness and complexity of the craft in this unique setting. From the beginning there was something about working with other people and this Interdependence of relationships in traditional craft work that spoke to her, and likely led to her fascination with earliest human creations and digging clay directly from the earth. From Hampshire College to Alabama and Mexico, her interest in primal substances--fire, ash, clay--took many different forms. It was during this time that she discovered her passion for wood firing--not just the striking and unpredictable appearance which is a culmination of extreme influences (flame path, atmosphere, temperature, time to name a few) but especially the process of coming together with a community of potters to work through the intensity of a firing. Each wood fired piece contains something of this struggle and resulting vitality. This form of firing continues to be a driving force in Claire's personal creative work. The pieces in this show are comprised primarily of recent pieces from the Rochester Folk Art Guild, but also include some historic pieces made with Alabama clay and fired with ash glazes made from BBQ wood ash she made in college. 

Website: https://www.clairewillispottery.com

IG: @clairewillispottery

FB: Claire Willis Pottery