Resident Potter: Lori Theriault

Born in Vermont, Lori has been semi-nomadic in address and in career, having worked as a stage manager, innkeeper, restaurant manager, talent agent, event producer, and office manager in Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington DC. She began her clay studies in Washington, DC in 2001 at Hinckley Pottery Studios, and over about four years, she progressed from individual classes and attending visiting artist workshops to working with and running the Studio Assistant Program.  In her last year in DC, she also worked as Studio Manager and completed a Teaching Apprenticeship with Jill Hinckley. After seeing slides of western North Carolina during a visiting artist workshop, she decided to relocate to Asheville in 2006. 

After a two year Resident Artist Program at the Odyssey Center for Ceramic Arts, Lori opened and ran her own working and teaching studio, Crazy Green Studios, in West Asheville where she had a small but vibrant community of emerging potters among her studio members. Crazy Green Studios is now located at The Village Potters where Lori is a Resident Artist and Mentor in the Independent Study and Mentoring Program. Her work is shown and sold at The Village Potters and in other fine galleries in the region, and she also creates work for restaurants and food professionals, including Branded Wares for Cúrate Tapas Bar, French Broad Chocolates and The Biltmore Village Inn, and service wares for The Rustic Grape, Bad Happy Poutine, and Jargon Restaurant in Asheville, and Tandem Restaurant in Carrboro, NC.

 

 

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I create functional pottery that wants to be touched and used. Texture, both tactile and visual, informs my work. My inspiration comes from the natural world as well as from the layers of texture in all my relationships, and I’m constantly amazed at the subtle influences I see come out in the work. A current design around trees is inspired by the community that surrounds me, both in nature and the human forms. Each with their own attitude and expression, yet all share much in common. As avid cook, I fervently believe that Homemade tastes better on Handmade, and as an artist, I believe in Individual, Handmade Design.