Fine Art | Ornamental | Studio Pottery

Fine Art

My work stands in for what I cannot say or write about the world. Things not amenable to words, but which I must express. Often an emotion or a memory will come percolating up as I wedge the clay. I welcome this, and the work absorbs it. My heart and my hands are linked somehow inside.

Ideally, each piece will seem to have a unique personal biography, a rich existence instantly suggested by its surface—as with ruins, or the lines of a face. Above all I wish to make you feel.

Ornamental

I produce a wide variety of architectural ceramics by hand, including indoor and outdoor tile, moldings, pillars, fireplace surrounds, chimney pots, fountains, bonsai pots, planters, terracotta ornament, commercial and residential signage, masonry units, pillar caps, finials, and much more.

Studio

Functional ware in the studio pottery tradition. I especially enjoy making teapots, tea bowls, cups and steins, serving bowls, platters, storage jars, baking pans, fermentation vessels, and vases.

You can buy directly here, or by visiting a gallery or stockist offering my work. If you’d like to discuss a private commission, please contact me here.

About Holt

I have no formal training in ceramics. When I found clay I was already thirty and writing technical documents for science and industry. I had abandoned the idea of ever working with my hands for a living as impractical. The life of an artist was inconceivable to me.

But then I found clay—rust of this planet—and was saved. From the moment I touched it, I knew. I understood its potential in a flash. I knew its likes and dislikes. I was seduced by its buttery physicality, its color, its smell. The possibilities of infinite forms, infinite surfaces, infinite colors overwhelmed me–and still do. The material’s direct and intimate connection to the earth. The drama of the fire.

I feel in collaboration with fundamental, planetary forces. We create durable objects of function and beauty together. It’s a dream.

I saw that I could spend a lifetime learning from what others had done in this medium, and from the clay itself, which speaks to an artist if anything does. And so I started the studios. To make things, to teach others whatever I learn, and to build a life and a world out of clay.