2025 Anderson Ranch Scholarship Recipient - Clay in Color

Dec 15

Clay in Color

Anderson Ranch 2 Week Workshop with Linda Lopez
Experiments in color, texture and the perfect imperfections of trying something new.

This summer I had the chance to step far outside my usual practice. I was awarded a scholarship from Anderson Ranch to attend a two-week ceramics workshop taught by the amazing Linda López. If you’re not familiar with her work, López creates sculptural objects that often feel soft, humorous, and quietly attentive to everyday life. Her balance of form and surface feels effortless, and she has an incredible understanding of how color behaves in clay—how stains shift during firing, how saturation changes with tiny adjustments, and how those choices ultimately shape the personality of a piece. Learning from her up close was a rare experience.

Ceramics is pretty far removed from what I typically do, so the technical side of color manipulation was completely new territory. I learned how to mix clay from scratch, add stains in the right proportions, adjust saturation, and blend more nuanced pigment combinations. I also made test tiles to track how color would transform in the kiln and began to recognize the subtle differences in raw clay before firing. The learning curve was steep, but it was exciting to feel my understanding expand in real time.

One of the most unexpected parts of the workshop was how much the whole environment reminded me of being back in college. My peers were curious, generous, and genuinely fun to work alongside. The atmosphere at the Ranch encouraged exploration rather than perfection, and without the pressure to create specific finished pieces, I had the freedom to experiment. That openness allowed me to discover new approaches and make work I’m genuinely proud of.

The images below are examples from that process—color tests, material experiments, and some of the pieces that emerged during my time at the Ranch. They represent a lot of trial and error, but also the excitement of learning a medium I’d never fully explored before.

I’m incredibly grateful for the experience and how much it pushed me. If you’d like to see more, all available work is for sale on my website.