Aysha Peltz is a studio potter and a member of the visual arts faculty at Bennington College in Vermont. Peltz and her husband, Todd Wahlstrom, also own and operate StudioPro Bats. Peltz received her BFA and MFA from Alfred University. Peltz has taught at several schools and art centers including:  Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Alfred University and the Kansas City Art Institute. In 2005, Peltz was awarded an Emerging Artist Award at the National Council for the Education of the Ceramic Arts. In 2019 she was a demonstrating artist for the NCECA conference in Minneapolis. Peltz’s work is in many collections, including the American Museum of Ceramic Art, The Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, and the Huntington Museum of Art, where she received the Walter Gropius Master Award.

 

The pottery I make explores imagined space, scale, and the poetic properties of the ceramic medium. I believe most good pots, whether functional or not, conjure up associations beyond practical use. The forms I make reference utility and stir emotions; their familiarity creates an invitation to explore further. To accentuate their organic, naturalistic qualities, I fire the work under fluid, translucent glazes, which preserves “moments” in the fired clay. My pleasure in making these pieces comes from losing myself in their surfaces and imagining myself in their landscape; a journey in which references become allusions. I make my forms on the potter’s wheel throwing primarily with porcelain and occasionally a smooth, white, stoneware clay body. The thrown pots are built on basic geometries, cylinders or cones varying in proportion with a suggestion of volume. To these forms, I add layers of texture and dimensional line that respond to and emphasize the actions to follow. I alter my structures immediately after throwing them when they are still wet on the wheel, this alteration is a push into the inside or outside of the wall, expanding the texture from behind, creating curves and swells in the form. This way of working naturally creates suggestions of terrain, body, and flora; parched earth, a body in motion, or the imminent decay of something overripe.