About the Artist

MARY COOVER grew up in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania where her early experiences with the clay lining the banks of a nearby creek began her lifelong love of this medium. Shaping this wonderful slippery stuff of such varied textures and colors into creatures that live and play in the watery, clay-filled places of the Earth still fascinates her today. Although her formal training taught her how to use the potter's wheel, apply certain minerals for coloring and glazing, and build and fire kilns, the most important ingredient in her work is still her childhood love for clay.

Mary received her Master's Degrees in Education and Fine Arts from the University of Florida, where she taught ceramics in the Department of Fine Arts. Her clay work was included in Young Americans, a show sponsored by the American Crafts Council, published in American Craft Magazine, and exhibited at the Mint Museum, NC;

Museum of Contemporary Crafts, NYC; Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NYC; and Chalk Farm Gallery, London, England.

    The Artist mixes her own porcelain using a formula she has worked with for over thirty years. She begins with dry ingredients: a blend of kaolin, ball clay, flint, feldspar and other minerals.  These are mixed with water in a pug mill and then wedged by hand.
     All of her objects are sculpted using many traditional pottery techniques including throwing the clay on a potter's wheel or rolling it out into slabs and then building the forms through pulling, twisting and shaping.
     The forms must be hollowed out in order to dry evenly in preparation for firing.  Specific minerals are applied for color before the low, or bisque, firing at about 1700 degrees Fahrenheit, and again before the high fire, which reaches temperatures up to 2350 degrees.  Examples of minerals used for colors are iron for brown, cobalt for blue, vanadium for yellow and green.
      High temperature glazes, which are free of lead, are used on functional objects.   

COOVER PORCELAIN

2006  Summer Shows

Musikfest   8/4 to 8/13

Bethlehem, PA

Peters Valley Craft Show

9/30 and 10/1

Sussex Co. Fairgrounds, NJ