Natalie Blake Studios  |  Ceramics
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Rich colors, sculptural lids, and a fluid carving style are all recognizable features of Natalie Blake’s pottery.  Her work is at once modern and classical, aqueous and lushly verdant—the visible result of years spent developing her artistic voice through international travel, apprenticeships, and formal training. 
At thirteen Blake moved with her parents to the West Indies where she attended public school. After high school graduation she backpacked through South America for a year.  In 1992, having earned a degree in ceramics and painting from Kenyon College, she spent a year as a Watson Fellow traveling in Korea, Nepal, India, and Indonesia studying ceramics with rural women. Natalie began scuba diving in 1998, and found the world of outrageous color, pattern and flamboyant textures of aquatic life.  This became fertile ground for her wide experiences to collect and pool into artistic voice. 

As she tells it, “One of my earliest mentors in college, Susan Balboni, referred to the vessel as a spirit keeper. I want the essence of the work to safeguard the spirit of the natural world, at once reverent and irreverent, poised yet unpredictable. I love gestural  drawing that is not preconceived and that reflects the profile of my experience. What continues to bring me back to the thrown vessel is the possibility of capturing the poise and vibrancy of clay as it expands outward on the wheel. Creating a piece that conveys fullness and ripeness, finding out what the surface has to say by the drawing I lay over it, simply moving this most abundant material on earth under my hands, invites the next adventure.”
 
Natalie Blake Studios are located in Brattleboro, Vermont. Her work has been exhibited and collected throughout the continental United States as well as in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the British West Indies, and New Zealand. She is the recipient of many awards and her work has been acquired by the permanent collections of several museums.