Visiting Artist Highlight: Kayla Jackson

Kayla Jackson (she/her)
@Mixed.Clay
 
Kayla Jackson was a visiting artist at Rain City Clay in the fall of 2022. During her time as a visiting artist she worked on trying new forms, glaze testing, and creating a body of work for the RCC/Rat City Studios Holiday Show & Sale. Kayla is teaching an 8-week introductory wheel throwing class at RCC during the Winter 2023 class session.

Kayla was raised in the Boston area and moved to Seattle in 2017 after living in Minnesota, New York, and New Orleans. She has always been interested in art, but dove deeper into clay in 2020 through a mix of handbuilding in her living room, classes at North Seattle College, and wheel throwing in Krista Cortese's studio. In her day job, Kayla works on climate justice policy for local government.

Artist Statement:

My goal is to make functional pottery that inspires people to notice and appreciate the small things. I seek to preserve moments through texture and images that bring me joy or curiosity. I am mostly inspired by nature and textures from found objects. I find that clay, and the multi-step process of ceramics, allows me to meditate on a certain idea, texture, color, or small piece of my day that I chose to memorialize in clay. I use handbuilt and thrown methods, embracing the various mood and feelings that each way of making evokes. Handbuilding is often a slower and more mobile process, while throwing can be meditative, messy, and exact. I often enjoy letting the clay tell its own stories and create spontaneous characters that celebrate brown skin tones and sassy human expressions. In other pieces, I meditate on details of natural elements, such as insects, bacteria, and water.