Madison & Main - Susan Anderson

Susan Anderson

I have been a maker of things all my life. I began making pots 28 years ago, just after the birth of my youngest child. I began with functional pots. When I was taking classes for my Masters Degree, my work became more sculptural, but I still have a fascination with the functional. My home is filled with hand-made pots, both useful--lamps and planters and tiles and dinnerware--and sculptural.

My influences are family and nature and travel. It is my goal to create pieces that are evocative of an attitude of partnership and of reverence and mystery and devotion. It is my intention to express in an intuitive way the layered, mysterious nature of my world view: mythic, spiritual, relational, and connected to the cosmos. I seek to create art that celebrates life with joy and beauty.

For me, creating is a meditative process. I see the artist as a shaman, creating an adjacent dimension, beyond visible and ordinary reality, that empowers and enlivens the art form. I see the role of the artist-as-shaman as evoking energy for healing schisms in our culture through visual imagery. In my own work I seek to unify disparate elements: feminine and masculine; intuitive and intellectual; spiritual and material; light and dark; death and life. In unifying these elements, I have come to understand the illusion of separateness; unity brings a circular view to our linear world.

My functional work often features an iris motif. I am not sure whether I chose the iris, or the iris chose me! My mother planted iris along our driveway in Texas; she had brought the bulbs from her mother's garden in Virginia. When Mom died, my dad gave me some of her bulbs, which I planted in my own garden in Colorado. When I moved to the mountains, I planted the bulbs in my daughter's garden, where they thrive today, four generations of iris. My mountain studio looks over a meadow that is filled with wild iris each spring. The iris is an ancient symbol for the rainbow, the veil of the world's appearances behind which the spirit of the Goddess works unseen.

Since the beginning of time, humans have envisioned the Earth as Mother. The spiral is an ancient symbol of the continuity of life and of the Universe. As a potter, I work with clay, the body of Mother Earth. While forming pots on the wheel, the spiral occurs naturally. I have chosen the spiral as a personal symbol, a signature of sorts. (Click on images below for larger view.)