Maria Scott attributes her unique style of pottery to influences that come not only from nature, but also, perhaps, from a previous life. When she sits down with a slab of clay, she simply waits for that voice inside to come and guide her hands. You may recognize Scott from her decades of work at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts as the first face you saw when coming in to enjoy the art. She now works from home and currently has her work on display at Ninth Wave Studio in downtown Kalamazoo.
Another art form Scott enjoys is photography. Many of her photos focus on hearts that she finds in nature—a stone, a piece of glass, a plant, or a random shadow shaped like a heart.
“I consider myself a potter,” Scott says. “But I’m also an artist. I have a degree in art. And my father was a photographer, so I think I might have picked up some of that eye from him. And I love hearts. I love hearts that are more random and occur in nature or are just a surprise. I don’t look for them. I let them find me. When I’m out walking my dog and I see a heart, I take a picture of it.”
Back at her studio, Scott returns to her first passion—ceramics.
“I started working with clay my freshman or sophomore year in high school,” Scott says. “That’s really all it took for me to love it. It was my first experience with clay. I did all forms of art—I drew, I painted, I did copper enameling.”
Scott grew up in Chicago, attending a Catholic high school. That first love she developed for working in clay in those years lasted into adulthood. The way she worked the clay in those first years has lasted, too.
“We didn’t have wheels and we didn’t have a slab roller, so I learned how to hand-build,” she says. “And that’s what I do. I love to hand-build. I did learn to throw in college, just so I could justify saying I didn’t enjoy it. I roll out all my slabs by hand. I went through four years of college without ever using a slab roller in the ceramic studio. So that’s how I started in high school—I was 13 years old, I think.”
Today, continuing in that same hand-building way, Scott creates pots that she refers to as “she,” each with a personality. When she works, Scott says she has no plan but lets that voice from inside guide her hands. If that voice is from a life out of the past, Scott says, “I wish I knew her better. She is definitely of the Earth. I’m positive of that.”
Instilling that earthy, female voice into her pots, Scotts describes how they speak to her and the people who own them: “She loves you. She loves being with you. She loves that you want her in your home.”
Scott’s pottery is on view at the Ninth Annual Group Exhibit at Ninth Wave Studio in Kalamazoo through January 19, 2024.
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