Anzietta DiPierro is currently enjoying studio-time working in assemblage art, metals, glass, clay, and a variety of painting mediums when time allows. She teaches visual arts at Lakeside High School in Ashtabula, OH.
Anzietta utilizes her Masters degree (Walden University,MD) in Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment in everyday cross curricular instruction as well as continuing education credits (Dominican University of California) to organize and keep current with a battery of requirements for local/state/federal educational protocols.
Her current work is a reflection of a lifetime of learning. She found a love for clay while working toward a BFA (Edinboro University of PA) and earned a BS in education that would be utilized after many years of travel and apprenticing with artisans across the U.S. in many mediums.
As an advocate of the arts, she incorporates her daily living, reflective notions, sacred spaces, emotional bonds, and a love of theology and of the earth to project her “self” in a series of “Protective Ravens” that show her studies of saints and currently, Hindu goddesses.
Michael W. High is an Ohio artist living in Munson Township expressing a unique voice in the world of sculpture. “My work can be seen locally, nationally and internationally. Art is my foundation to explore and express how my world is shaped by my personal point of view. I embrace the psychological side by using imagery to elicit emotional responses. By merging and embracing materials of clay, fiber, and wood, the light and
dark, thought and emotion, abstraction and process coalesce into vision, craft, and sculpture.
Humans have an incredible but short journey – part planful and part unexpected – recorded in emotion. The unanticipated event arms evolution through simultaneous feelings of fear, betrayal, opportunity, and longing. Materials and life’s journey merge together into pieces that touch the mind and heart.
My process evolves to integrate struggle and emotion that is fueled by revealing new expressions. The construction grows by hand to create layers, into volume, and finally into a complex collage of emotions, evolution, materials and topics.”
Having relocated to Ashtabula 34 years ago, Rebecca Payne Stowell claims Ashtabula as her official home. Originally from Ann Arbor Michigan, Rebecca moved to central Texas in the early 80’s, receiving her BFA from Southwest Texas in 1988 and after moving to Ashtabula attended Edinboro University for her MFA. Both times, her declared specialty was ceramics.
The past 25 + years were spent raising a family and working for After School Discovery where she was able to use her creativity to design enrichment programming for the local area schools.
Rebecca retired in May 2022 and has been able to devote much of her time to working with clay again and hopes to find other avenues to be of service to her adopted community.
Gail Trunick is an accomplished artist with a concentration in clay and mixed media sculpture. Her pieces are known for their unique perspectives and unconventional approaches. Gail’s sculptures are included in numerous one-person and group exhibitions, and she has numerous pieces in public and private collections, including one in the White House collection at the Smithsonian. The daughter of a full-time potter, Gail received a BFA from Kent State University with a major in painting, but soon after graduation she chose to follow in her mother’s footsteps and return to clay as her primary medium.
Her career highlights include a residency in the Nek Chand Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India, owning Trunick Gallery which represented the work of 100 artists for over 20 years, and is currently exhibiting her own work in a restored 1915 caboose called “Gail’s Train of Thought.”
Theresa Yondo was born in Cleveland, grew up in Northern Ohio, and has been passionately working with clay since 1979 making both functional and sculptural objects. She graduated from Kent State University in 1997, M.F.A. in studio arts, and has served as faculty adjunct at a variety of colleges, art schools, community centers, privately and most recently retirement centers facilitating art therapy. In addition to teaching, Theresa has always maintained a studio practice that led her to exhibit work with the American Craft Council, Ohio Craft Museum and many other venues around the country, Chicago IL, Chautauqua NY and Carmel CA.
In 2018, Theresa’s work took a new turn towards installations. Evolving Earthly Objects is the current installation being created (EEO). This installation combines hundreds of organic clay shapes inspired by nature for endless possibilities of gardens to emerge. It is not unusual to see a water plant next to a desert plant in the installations. Just as seeds cross-pollinate and the climate shifts who knows what new landscapes will emerge on Earth.
“When I began making small sculptural objects, I did not yet have a clear idea where this would lead to, but I kept making them. Eventually, garden installations began to appear as the work lay next to each other and I could not stop myself from making more. Nature is a palette of inspiration for endless possibilities of objects.”
The work is often experimental and fired in various types of kilns, exploring firing atmospheres. Theresa recently traveled to Star, North Carolina and spent two months as artist in residence at Starworks Ceramics working with North Carolina clays.
