Lidded Jar by Mark Shapiro

Mark Shapiro, based in Worthington, holds a degree in anthropology and spent his early years in New York making sculpture and supporting himself as a carpenter. His turn to pottery answered the vexing problem that he had been unable to resolve in sculpture: Where does the stuff go?

On a pedestal in patron’s living room? In front of a building? In a museum storage vault? As a potter, on the other hand, Mark knew his work would be held and used, that it would stay in the main places of people’s lives.

Pottery provides connection, intimacy, and accessibility that sculpture, for him, lacked. Mark’s studio, Stonepool Pottery, has become a hub of local and national ceramic culture.