Hannah Niswonger

Hannah builds functional pots out of white stoneware from her studio in Massachusetts. "My tools are simple: a knife, a serrated metal rib, a sponge, a brush. All of my work is hand-built from slabs of clay. I love working with slabs like fabric; the pots are sewn together, scored along the edges, nipped and tucked together to make rounded forms from sheets of clay." Hannah says, she loves the immediacy of the connection people make with images of animals. Pattern and color anchor my animals to the pots. They serve as frames, and backgrounds, so that the animals exist in their own narrow space around the pots.

Hannah received an MFA in ceramic sculpture from Alfred University, New York. As an undergraduate she attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where she received a BA in studio art. She has taught courses at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. She gives workshops nationally, and exhibits regularly in galleries and juried craft shows, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art Show and the Smithsonian Craft Show and CraftBoston, where she won the Award of Distinction. She lives in Melrose, Massachusetts with her husband, three kids, one dog, and two rabbits.