By Jim Bloch
If you’re wondering how professional potters apply the finishing touches to their ceramic pieces or how to decorate you own pottery, join ceramics artist Juliet Faber at the St. Clair Art Association on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2-4 p.m.
Faber’s visit will also function as a preview of the art association’s fourth annual Potters Market, to be held Oct. 17-19 at War Water Brewery, for which Faber is the featured artist. She will join 19 locally and regionally recognized clay artists at the fall market.
“Don’t miss watching this skilled artist share her unique techniques of embellishing her beautiful clay pieces,” said SCAA member Carolyn Syzmanski, who is organizing the Potters Market and Faber’s visit. “Come and enjoy a lively, free demonstration held in the classroom area of the Alice Moore Center for the Arts in the St. Clair Riverview Plaza.”
The Alice Moor Art Center is the home of the SCAA.
In college at Western Michigan University in 1992, Faber took an elective class in pottery with a friend, and it changed her life.
“I was hooked,” Faber said in a statement. “I am addicted. It’s my fulltime job. I’ve been a potter for over 30 years, and I love that I’ve never stopped learning.”
Faber, who lives in East China Township, works mainly in porcelain out of her studio in Marine City. Her focus now is on hand painting her ceramic pieces using commercial and handmade underglazes, stains and slips with what she calls “whimsical twists inspired by nature and architecture.”
She helped launch the pottery classes and ceramics studio at the SCAA in 1998 and guided them for more than a decade. Over those years, she worked with other potters to deepen her knowledge of glazes and operating multiple kilns in the service of the community.
She considers the art center to be the locus of her “ceramic birth.”
Faber has shown her work at the Detroit Artists Market, the Michigan Art Education Association’s annual conference, Art Prize Grand Rapids, Royal Oak Clay, Glass and Metal Show, the Birmingham Art Show and many others.
She teaches ceramics at the Foundry in Port Huron.
Visitors to the Potters Market in October will get a chance to win a piece of Faber’s pottery.
“Space is limited,” said Syzmanski of the Sept. 6 demonstration. “Please go online to reserve seating at www.stclairart.org or call 810-329-9576.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
