Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2023
Veronica Watkins grew up in the Kansas City Missouri area. She received a BFA from Northwest Missouri State University in 1996; she went on to receive an MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2000. Veronica has taught at various colleges, universities and workshops and has participated in short term residencies at Belger Crane Yard Studio and the Clay Studio of Missoula. She now resides on a 100 acre cattle ranch in Maryville Missouri where she enjoys her family and maintains a studio practice. She is the Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Northwest Missouri State University.
The wonder of pottery is that it is taken into our most intimate spaces. I appreciate that pots have the power to facilitate rituals and experiences and connect people. Discovery of subtle nuances, marks of the hand, edges, are realized over time and connect the user to the maker through touch, time, and use. Abstractions of landscape and architecture become the conceptual underpinning for my approaches to form, painterly surfaces, color, and texture. Experimentation and improvisation continue to be important to me as I am repeatedly questioning the balance between the rational and spontaneous in my compositional processes.