Susan Stark-Johnson
Susan Stark-Johnson
Susan Stark-Johnson was born and raised in Arizona. After college, she taught Junior High Ceramics and Theatre in Mesa, Arizona and obtained her 300 hour Yoga teacher certification from the Southwest Institute for the Healing Arts. In 2009 she moved to Nebraska to be a ceramics resident at the LUX Center for the Arts. She spent two years as an artist-in-residence at the LUX before moving to Colorado for a year where she continued her studio practice out of the Northern Colorado Potter’s Guild. In 2012 she returned to Nebraska to serve as the gallery director for the LUX Center for the Arts until 2014, at which time she decided to focus her attention once more upon her art.
I am interested in creating beautiful objects for people to use in their everyday lives. I am personally intrigued by Islamic art, Indian textiles, and the sublime beauty of nature and find inspiration in these for my surface decoration.
I am fascinated by techniques that allow me to pair bare clay with glazed clay. I seek these results by creating raised designs with intaglio cut pressed slabs and/or by masking the clay with wax resist. A passion for clay itself drives me to incorporate its raw beauty into my highly decorative surface designs, and I am additionally delighted by the tactile experience that the texture of the exposed clay conveys while the piece is in use.
My forms are functional, because my work is completed when it brings a sense of the sacred and fosters an experience of beauty and transcendence in its use.
