Diane Sjoholm

United States

Morales grew up witnessing the devastation wrought by the Bronx fires and crack cocaine Diane Sjoholm is a ceramic artist who describes her work as “a dance between controlling and manipulating while honoring and listening to the medium.  Often the best results are those that happen outside of my control, when I step aside and allow things to happen,” says the artist.  Her works are hand-built stoneware and porcelain made in simple curved shapes that are layered with slip and sand, then textured and glazed.

Sjoholm is a landscape designer by trade whose work with plant material is as intuitive and meditative as her work in clay.  The inviting organic and tactile qualities found in her ceramic pieces denote the relationship between Sjoholm’s landscape design and her ceramic art.  In both, one senses the artist’s connection to the earth and her desire to respect and nurture it.

Sjoholm studied horticulture, environmental science, and biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and at what was formerly Southampton College.  Although she is largely self-taught as a ceramicist, Sjoholm has worked closely with a number of talented potters at the Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons and Greenwich House Pottery.  The artist lives and works on the East End of Long Island.