Rye Art Study Group Presents

Maureen Mills and Steve Zoldak

The Rye Art Study group is pleased to present Maureen Mills and Steve Zoldak as our November featured artists. Having made pottery together for over 30 years, their work reflects a mastery of the medium that combines old world techniques with a modern sensibility.

Having demonstrated slip trail art for a number of years at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, the method has become a prominent feature in their work. In this technique, intricate designs are drawn onto the ceramic surface with slip, a thin slurry of clay and oxides. These designs remain raised during the firing process, allowing for greater control and precision of the final surface design.

Maureen’s love of surface design and decoration is well documented in her book Surface Design for Ceramics published by Lark Books in 2008, which has led her to teaching workshops across the country on the topic. When she is not teaching or advising or doing a long list of other Ceramics Department Chair’s duties at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, she is a studio potter with her husband Steve in Portsmouth New Hampshire.

Steve has been involved in the arts since studying Graphic Design and Painting in college. His love of clay continued through college, apprenticing at the pottery studio at Silver Dollar City in Branson Missouri with Harvey Bufford. Since 1987 to 2013 he and Maureen have been operating their studio on the grounds of Strawbery Banke Museum where his teaching skills excel in daily demonstrations to museum visitors while developing his own pottery style. Today he continues to make pottery at their home studio in Portsmouth, NH.

In addition to her work being exhibited throughout the country, Maureen is a recipient of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Artist Advancement Grant and was awarded a Fellowship in 2012 by the New Hampshire Council on the Arts. Most recently in 2014 she received the Alumni Achievement Award in Art from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she earned her MFA in Ceramics and Drawing. Both continue to exhibit at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Fair in Sunapee each August.

Please join us on Monday, November 12th from 9:30 to 11 a.m. when Maureen and Steve will be here to discuss their work. The Rye Art Study Group gathers the third Monday of most months at the Rye Congregational Church at 580 Washington Rd. Rye, NH 03870. Visit http://www.ryeartstudy.com or e-mail: ryeartstudy@gmail.com for more information.