Welcome to
Flamingo Clay Studio 

Dogs have been a lifelong love for me, and it was natural to combine that dedication with my recent passion for clay and pottery. I have been creating images of dogs since I could hold a crayon.

Pottery has become the perfect medium to capture and share my love of dogs with like-minded people. Intergenerational love of dogs was fostered by my father and has been passed onto my two adult children who adore their terriers, Olive and Fitz. I have always had dogs in my life and have an appreciation for all breeds and the companionship and partnership and unconditional love dogs bring to our lives. Experience in agility and obedience as well as dog grooming has contributed to an artist perspective of dog forms.

My all-purpose and uniquely designed creations aim to capture the fun and comfort and pure love dogs bring to our lives.

I like to watch things move and I like to make things. I could spend an hour watching pelicans and or a tractor moving earth. I can also spend all day shaping wood or bending wire until it becomes the thing I want. Art was a hobby most of my life. My career took me overseas fo many years. I managed computer systems in developing countries for U.S. Government relief and development efforts. Wherever I was, I enjoyed looking into the workshops and seeing things being made. Craftspeople with limited resources make up for it with perseverance and planning. I saw a plumber in Ethiopia drill a faucet hole in a sink by tapping on it with a screwdriver for an hour or so. With each tap, a tiny flake of porcelain broke loose. It seems tedious, but it probably didn’t take any longer than it would take me to drive to the hardware store and buy a carbide drill bit.

I never throw anything electrical or electronic away. I have to take it apart and salvage things. Motors, wires, springs, screws. I like to make my art with what materials and tools I have on hand when I start. Often it begins with a leftover piece of wood...

Whether you are seeing Nava's joyful people in Chinatown or Living Treasures, her series of older vital Americans, you can recognize the language by use of materials and intent. Milk paints, house paints and varnishes used in furniture painting and murals give the work an old world palette. House paint as a medium brings a harmony to the eye of what we see in our environment. "My art is an appreciation of the simple daily experience and the rituals we create to celebrate and validate our existence."

JoAnn's works are in the permanent collections of Coral Springs Museum of Art, The Department of the Interior (Voyageurs National Park), The Outsider Art Collection at Virginia Tech and in many private collections.

I am grateful to be a part of the Flamingo Clay Gallery and Studio

As I bead, my mind is calm. I have a sense of peace despite the noise of the world around me. I am meditating on the Divine Feminine. I hope my beadwork encourages us to honor ourselves and others in the spirit of love and compassion. To adorn oneself is to love oneself.

As an artist, I create as a form of meditation. . I especially love functional artto use as tools. Painting archetypal images on drums is one example of using art in this way. Not only is the drum utilized as an instrument for meditation and healing but on the wall will reflect a powerful yantra or holy image.

Any repetitive work in whatever art form can be meditative and useful. I provide workshops to have fun but also to create a space for calming the mind.

A word about the bones:
The moose cow bones were found in the Maine woods in the early Spring of 2012. The cow apparently died of brainworm. Her bones lay peacefully beneath a grove of bright emerald gold alder leaves still clinging to the branches providing a still canopy of tranquility. This place felt sacred to me as I gathered a few of her bones to honor her spirit with art reflecting birth, death and rebirth. Transformation. Transmutation. She walks in peace in my heart always.

Joseph Francis has been a light artist for over a decade, and created many LED installations in Lake
Worth Beach over the years. The sign at Rudy's and the Zoo Gym sign are just a few of the creations that are still shining.

Joseph and Hershi are artists at Stay Lit Art with an art studio located in Stuart, Florida.

I drew on walls and the floor and my body when I was a child. My father gave me a wooden box filled with oil paints, and I copied the copies of Covarrubias, Picasso, Renoir and Degas that hung on their walls. I was never without a sketch book, drawing everything around me.

I have been creating art in many forms since I could hold a crayon. I am challenged by learning new techniques and excited when I can merge techniques.

Over the years I have worked with everything from fine jewelry, bookbinding, calligraphy, stained glass, furniture woodworking, sculpture, and painting. I am continually inspired bythe unlimited flexibility of clay, which has allowed me to create everything from large human sculpture to miniature medieval illuminated clay books embellished with gems.

“Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.” ~Stella Adler

For most of the year, I live in Western New York with my husband Rick and dog Jackson. When I’m not sitting behind my potter’s wheel, I’m teaching at Roberts Wesleyan College where I am an Associate Professor.

My three daughters encouraged me to “stop giving my work away and start to sell it”! I took my first wheel class 18 years ago and it was love at first sight! Working with clay provides me with a spiritual respite that restores my soul and keeps me sane.

My current work, silk-screening on clay, has given me an opportunity to honor heroes like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, promote social justice, and remind us all to “speak our minds even if our voice shakes”.

Much of my work has been influenced by teaching students that live in a world where being different means being excluded. In 2008 “Transition Studios” was born. Transition Studios provides an experience in the visual arts for adult students with disabilities.

I graduated from Parsons School of Design with my degree in Ceramics. My career in art and design has been working for other designer brands. The return to my working in clay is re-learning my first language.

These slabs of clay are canvases for story telling, inspired by the curvilinear quality of both Chinese and Arabic calligraphy.

Most recently I have been intrigued and seduced by the sensual curvilinear nature of snakes. Snakes can typically provoke a strong negative response. My goal is to embrace its historic symbolic dualism for transformation and immortality, wisdom and evil, Sexual desire coupled with fertility. I am drawn to the physical elegance of the serpentine form while contrasted with the possibilty of a deadly encounter.