Collection: Laurie Caffery - Featured Artist

Laurie Caffery Harris grew up in Boone, North Carolina, a small town surrounded by the peaks and valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Encouraged by her creative parents - a painter mom and a custom home designer and builder dad, Laurie spent her childhood enthusiastically exploring different mediums, primarily painting and drawing.

It wasn’t until college that Laurie found a passion for working with clay. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Studio Art with an emphasis in ceramics in 2014. Since then, Laurie has continued to embrace every opportunity to educate herself and others within her field. In 2019 she completed a two year Artist in Residency at Odyssey Clayworks where she continues to teach classes in throwing and surface decoration.

Her artwork is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. Currently, Laurie continues to create her narrative-driven, decorative ceramics from her home studio in Asheville, NC alongside her husband, Morgan, and her dogs, Buck and Jessica.

Artist Statement:

The use of functional ceramics incorporates daily visual and habitual elements within our lives. They can be objects of festivity and beauty, or vessels for nourishment. Utilitarian pottery is an intrinsic part of social relationships and rituals that are created over a shared meal. These objects compose a conversation that both enriches the celebrations of life and what sustains us. Through narrative imagery and thoughtful design, my work elevates daily practices into lighthearted and joyful experiences that convey a sense of place.

Having grown up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I learned to associate the peaks and valleys with my father, who taught me the names of the bright blue ranges and how to find healing in the landscape. My mother, a painter, encouraged me to pursue drawing as guidance through the anxiety I experienced as a child. These grounding practices that I was given by my family have left me captivated by the concepts of home and belonging.

Within my work, I explore these concepts through narrative and whimsy. I draw storylines on functional work to elicit the feeling of place. Pitching a tent in the woods is a simple act, but it is one that denotes presence and the creation of your own home. This imagery depicts the playful, the magical, and the whimsical that exists within reality and our imaginations.

Find Laurie's Artaxis page: https://artaxis.org/artist/laurie-caffery/

Find Laurie on Instagram: @lauriecaffery.clay

** Laurie Caffery's Artaxis Shop has ended. You can find more work available for sale by visiting the other Featured Artist collections HERE