mike cinelli

Mike Cinelli is a ceramic artist, father and occasional husband residing in Taylor, Mississippi. Born and raised in Ormond Beach, Florida; he first attended the University of Florida where his initial serious interest in clay began. After relocating to Mississippi, he received his BFA (ceramics) from the University of Mississippi in 2014. The following year, he filled a one year position as the Ceramic Studio Technician for the University of Mississippi.

His work has been displayed nationally and internationally in numerous juried and invitational exhibitions, with work displayed as far away as Skopelos, Greece, where he attended a one month residency at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts. He has received various jury awards, including the Studio Potter Merit Award. He was featured in the August 2016 issue of Ceramics Monthly as a contributor to “From Idea to Finished Form”. Currently, he is attempting to juggle his studio practice, being a father and husband, and maintaining a rigorous schedule of complaining on the internet.

Liz Zlot Summerfield

Liz grew up in Northern California and was a child of both an entrepreneur and a lover of the arts. Both parents instilled a determination and confidence in her that she could succeed at anything she worked towards.

She attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to complete her Masters of Fine Arts in 2004. Since graduation, she has lived and worked as a studio artist in Bakersville, North Carolina with her husband and glass artist, Scott Summerfield. They share a large outbuilding that houses each of their studios and a showroom for their work.

She has been an instructor and visiting artist at numerous clay facilities, colleges, and universities. She exhibits and sells her work nationally through exhibitions, galleries, and fine craft shows. Her work resides in various permanent collections.

She has been featured and on the cover of Ceramics Monthly and Clay Times magazine. She has also written several articles and created an instructional DVD produced by Ceramics Arts Daily featuring her ceramic process and her work.

In 2018 she co-created the Red Handed Symposium, a conference solely devoted to low-fire earthenware enthusiasts.

Amy Sanders

Amy Sanders is a potter whose earthenware vessels create a balance of form, texture and pattern with utility. She currently works as a studio artist, teaches adult handbuilding classes at Clayworks Studio and conducts workshops across the United States. Sanders completed a large-scale public art piece for the city of Charlotte in 2009 and was an 18-month Affiliate Artist at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC from 2004-2006. Her work is exhibited in galleries throughout the United States, several publications and she has filmed an in-depth instructional video with international release. Sanders has been awarded Regional Artist Grant through the Arts and Science Council in Charlotte, NC and was a contributing artist in last spring’s ASC sponsored Community Supported Arts project.

Growing up in southern Ohio, Sanders spent her early years watching her mother and grandmothers sew. Upon moving to Charlotte in 1999, she did not have a clay studio in which to create; Sanders began to sew herself. Her experiences with sewing began to breathe life into her clay work. Patterns, textures and seams from fabrics and textiles appeared in her stamped clay vessels.

Ronan Peterson

Ronan Peterson maintains Nine Toes Pottery, a ceramics studio in Chapel Hill, NC, which produces highly decorative and functional earthenware vessels. His work is drawn from processes of growth and decay in the natural world and translated into a ceramic comic book interpretation of both real and imagined phenomena. He has been shown in local and national exhibitions, including the 2008 Strictly Functional Pottery National in East Petersburg, PA. He was also invited to participate in the 4th, 5th , 6th, 7th, 8th, and 11th Annual Potter’s Market Invitational at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, which includes some of North Carolina’s most talented ceramic artists and potters. His work has been featured in both Ceramics Monthly and Clay Times, and the books 500 Bowls and 500 Plates and Chargers, which includes an image of his plates on the back cover.

He has pieces included in the Permanent Collections of the North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove, NC and the Governor Morehead School in Raleigh, NC. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Kiln Gallery in Fairhope, AL, Mudfire Gallery in Atlanta, GA, Charlie Cummings Gallery in Gainesville, FL. He also taught for 10 years at local craft centers and ceramics studios in the Chapel Hill/Raleigh/Durham area of NC and has held workshops throughout the Southeastern United States, including at Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Mudfire Studio, and the Kiln Studio.