Madeleine Hall-Arber

Clay art including pottery, pins, fountains and sculpture

Madeleine's Mud Pie Studio
37 Whittier Road
Newtonville MA 02460
walk down the driveway to converted garage
617-510-5955
arber@mit.edu

My grandmother introduced me to the joys of making mud pies on the back steps of her tiny house in Diamond Springs, California. Color and design I later learned from my mother, a fine painter. It wasn't until I was in college, though, that I was properly introduced to clay and so found my medium. Adult education courses and a professional potter friend taught me the rudiments of wheel-work and hand-building. Then, an aunt found an old kick wheel for me and a kind landlord made room in his basement for me to set up a studio. Richmond Art Center allowed me to fire my work in their gas kiln.

Through several moves for college and graduate school, I continued to work at art centers and on borrowed equipment in every spare moment to hone my skills. Classes in life sculpture provided a rare opportunity to work on figurative sculptures based on live models.

After a several year hiatus for fieldwork in Africa, dissertation writing and children, I was finally able to return to the joy of clay.

Porcelain Pisces

What has long appealed to me is the challenge of offsetting the marvelous symmetry of wheel-thrown work with hand-built additions that surprise or amuse, but do not diminish the elegance of the thrown piece. My pots often became anthropomorphized or whimsical.

When my daughter was four, she wanted to help me throw and trim my pots, a not very successful joint venture in production. I found that we were both happier working at the kitchen table with separate lumps of clay. Since I was working with commercial fishing communities, developing a jewelry line of fish pins seemed natural.

Each one of the pins is individually formed by hand, bisque-fired, glazed in a variety of colors and then fired to approximately 2291 degrees Fahrenheit. In the final step, the pins are glazed again, this time with gold and luster to evoke the beautiful shimmer of sea-borne critters, and fired to a temperature of approximately 1333 degrees F.

In my work as an anthropologist and marine advisor to commercial fishermen, I am constantly amazed and inspired by the infinite variety of fish and other inhabitants of the seas. It is easy to understand why fish, so graceful, beautiful…and elusive…are symbols of good luck in many cultures.

Get a map and directions from: Yahoo or MapQuest.

Find this Studio on the Large Map or the Small Map