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Jerry Rothman (1933-2014) began exploring ceramics while studying industrial design at Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles-based Art Center School in the early 1950s. In 1956, at the invitation of master ceramist Peter Voulkos, Rothman enrolled in the ceramics graduate program at the Otis Art Institute. For the next few years, Rothman and a group of students who would become some of the most famous American ceramists of the century—Ken Price, Billy Al Bengston, Paul Soldner, and John Mason among them—studied under Voulkos and revolutionized American ceramics by questioning the traditional conventions of pottery and using clay as a sculptural medium. Read More

Horace Clark (1911-1995) studied art around the country, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, the Designers Art School in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Arizona, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1946. That same year, Clark accepted a teaching position in the School of Art at Syracuse University. He moved to Syracuse with his wife, painter and ceramist Mary Andersen, and taught painting for twenty-nine years before retiring in 1975. Read More

Born in Hackensack, New Jersey, David MacDonald (b. 1945) first experimented with ceramics in the late 1960s at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education. As part of the Art Education curriculum, MacDonald was required to take a ceramics course, and he quickly found that working with clay satisfied a desire to create pieces with dimension, form, and functionality, something he could not do when working in other mediums. After graduating from the Hampton Institute, MacDonald attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, receiving his Master of Fine Arts in 1971. Read More

Lois Hennessey (b. 1936) is a Baltimore-based artist and professor, known for whimsically anthropomorphizing animals in sculpture and illustration. At the Maryland Institute College of Art, Hennessey taught several art courses, including nature drawing. In both her teaching and work, Hennessey explores an interest in compositional concepts, such as form and space, and the interaction between her art and its surrounding environment. Read More

Originally trained as a coach painter, Quaker minister Edward Hicks is best remembered for his iconic series of Peaceable Kingdom paintings, which depict a biblical prophecy in the Book of Isaiah: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” Hicks likely viewed the prophecy as a central and concise statement of key Quaker principles, with each animal representing moral and religious beliefs as well as traits of human nature. Read More