Suzanne Hill

Suzanne Hill has been working in clay for over 50 years. After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design, she went on to study with some of the most renowned ceramic artists in the country at Alfred College of Ceramics, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramic Art. Since then, she has taught ceramic art in colleges, schools and camps and worked as an independent potter in New York City, at the Corcoran Museum in Washington, DC, and presently in Concord, MA. She lived overseas for over ten years; in Peru, Mexico, and Bangladesh; where she had the opportunity to study the traditional crafts of those countries and to work with indigenous potters. She enjoys working with all the possibilities clay has to offer, and produces a range of both functional and decorative pieces. Suzanne has a studio at the Umbrella, in Concord, Massachusetts where she works and teaches.

"I see myself as both an artist and a craftsperson. What separates fine craft from an ordinary object is that it goes beyond pure function and becomes a thing of beauty as well. My work is based on traditional shapes that have been part of a potter’s vocabulary for thousands of years. As a ceramic artist, I am always working with the relationship of form to decoration. There are so many variables when making a piece that one must learn to set up the conditions and then to work with the decorating and firing process. It is a combination of some control as well as being guided by the process. As in nature, no two pieces are exactly the same. There is room for infinite variety. In my recent work I have been exploring the relationship between classical shapes and forms found in nature. In the most recent series, the pieces are inspired by my trips to the landscapes of coastal New England and the American southwest. The colors of the landscape and the rock formations combine with the classical vessel shapes to create unique works of art. The driftwood and the stone handles on some of the pieces are inspired by the scrub trees and the rocky cliffs found in those windswept and beautiful landscapes.”