Mary Weisgram

Mary Weisgram is a functional potter whose ceramics are created to be used. While her pottery is built upon the belief of function, it is also exceptionally beautiful in its gentle forms and nature inspired glazes and decorations. Weisgram works with both porcelain and stoneware, within a narrow range of forms and colors. She finds that these limits challenge her to expand her creativity and allows her more freedom than one would think. She seeks to craft a balance between form and beauty, making a usable work of art that does not emphasize one over the other. Nature has long been an inspiration to Weisgram and it is evident in the organic nature of her muted color palette and her inclusion of leaves and other natural forms into the decoration of her pottery. She is attempting to emulate those natural patterns found upon a walk through the trees as wet leaves make patterns on the ground and sunlight dapples through the branches above. Weisgram earned an M.A. from Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University, Mankato). She has been a working potter for 40 years, including a time as the Ceramicist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center in the 1970s. Much of her pottery was made and exhibited in Ames, Iowa where she taught at the Octagon Center for the Arts and was an artist in residence with the Creative Artists Studio of Ames. The beauty of Weisgram’s pottery lies in its subtlety as these are wares meant to be touched and used as dynamic examples of functional pottery.