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I’ve been a studio potter for over a half-century and an educator for 38 years.  From 1994 until my retirement in 2018 I ran the clay program in Tennessee Tech University’s School of Art, Craft & Design at their satellite campus, the Appalachian Center for Craft.  I still teach clay workshops, normally including a series of summer workshops during a long road trip in the western U.S. and Canada, but those have been on hold due to Covid.  My wife Linda was a professor of American History at Maryville University in St. Louis, and upon retirement we moved to the Chapel Hill area, where our son Morgan is Chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at University of North Carolina.

In 2016, the American Ceramic Society published the rewritten, full-color second edition of my book Clay: A Studio Handbook.  For more information, click the title or the image above.  There are links to PDFs of the table of contents, introduction, and a list of the potters and ceramic sculptors featured in full-color illustrations.  Digital PDF copies can be purchased from the Ceramic Arts Daily Bookstore.  The hardcopy is currently out of print, but ACerS is printing another run and it should be available soon at the Ceramic Arts Daily Bookstore or Amazon.

For the first time in 36 years, I have my own studio away from academia, equipped with an L&L electric kiln and a 30-cubic-foot LPG soda kiln.  To see pots from my soda firings, go to Current and Recent Work in the Gallery.  To see the studio, recent soda firings, and the kiln construction, go to Studio and Soda Kiln in the Gallery.  To see a short video tour of my studio and another showing me making an elaborate slab-built teapot, click on Tour of My Studio or Creating a Slab-Built Teapot.

I joined the Chatham Artists Guild in 2019 and have participated in the Guild’s Chatham Artists Studio Tour every yearon the first two weekends in December.  Images of my display are on the Current and Recent Work page of the Gallery.  Please visit the Chatham Artists Guild website for additional information about the Guild and member artists.  Throughout the year my studio is open by appointment.  Please contact me if you’d like to visit.

The Out West webpage and its sub-pages feature images from annual summer road trips out west, plus a few from other locations. There’s also a gallery of slides shot by my father Dr. Frank A. Pitelka during his summers doing research in the Alaskan Arctic.

From 1975-85, I was a full-time studio potter at Railroad Stoneware, my studio in Blue Lake, California, making wheel-thrown functional stoneware.  In grad school at UMass-Amherst I switched to handbuilding and did elaborately-patterned laminated colored clay vessels and architectural sculpture, and continued that work for 15 years.  For the past 25 years I’ve focused on functional and sculptural vessels using slab and coil methods. To see examples of work through the stages of my career, go to the Gallery and click on the various pages.  To read about the technical processes, scroll down below the images, and go to Cone-7 Glazes I Use in Soda Firing.  To find out more about influences and direction in my work, see my Artist’s Statement and Biography.

I am thankful for a rewarding career in academia, but short-term workshops are my favorite teaching venue.  I’ve taught over 130 clay workshops nationally and internationally and it’s a thrill seeing what the participants accomplish in one to six days of intensive studio immersion.  For information about my workshops, go to the Workshops page.  To see the schedule of workshops and other upcoming events, go to Scheduled Workshops and Events.  To see a listing of workshops I have taught in the past, see my CV.  To find out about my approach to teaching, read my Statement of Workshop Teaching Philosophy.

Professional information, such as CV, short biography, and publications can be found on the Contact/Information page. The Publications page includes information about the new edition of my book, Clay: A Studio Handbook (American Ceramic Society, 2016).

To see work by my clay students at Tennessee Tech University, go to the Gallery and click on Student Work.  To see what my clay graduates are doing, scroll to the bottom of the Links page and click on the names.  To access a large collection of PDF handouts about ceramics and other subjects, go to the Documents and Handouts page.  Go to that page or click Super-Refined Terra Sigillata to access the PDF of that article.

The Appalachian Center for Craft is a satellite campus of Tennessee Technological University’s School of Art, Craft & Design, and is one of North America’s premier fine craft studio education facilities.  The portion of the SAC&D BFA program centered at the Craft Center is unique in its mission to offer the highest quality professional fine craft education in Clay, Glass, Metals, Fibers, and Wood, with emphasis on traditional process in the context of contemporary art and craft.  The grounds, sales gallery, and exhibition galleries are open seven days a week.  Click on Sales Gallery or Exhibition Galleries for information about what is currently showing.  To find out more about the Craft Center including the BFA Program in Clay, the Craft Certificate Program, and the Artist in Residence Program, go to the Appalachian Center for Craft webpage.

For more information, email me or go to the Contact/Information page.