Erin Kathleen Donohue ekd.com

Erin Kathleen Donohue is a self-taught potter and ceramics educator from Livermore, CA. Growing up in a very artistic family she drew, painted and "built" objects from a young age. Her earliest sculptures consisted of tiny houses fashioned from mud in the family garden. (Respecting her young daughter's creations, her mother would always water with care so as not to flood the miniature villages.) Having a need to create was never a question.

While at home with her three young children, Erin began painting, rendering landscapes in acrylics. She continued to pursue painting as her children were entering elementary school. Her discouragement that their school offered no real art program motivated her to develop and generate funding for an art studio open to the school's K-5 student body. The studio instructed in all the basic media, but working in clay was always the students' favorite and, over the eight years she ran the school-based studio, she discovered it had become hers as well.

Since 2001, she has been teaching for the City of Pleasanton, instructing clay enthusiasts of all ages in a range of ceramic skills. Her earliest classes focused on hand building but she quickly became enthused about, then addicted to wheel throwing -- borrowing a wheel on weekends and converting the beautiful painting studio built for her by her husband into a well-loved space for creating pottery. She has taught classes in throwing since 2006. Grateful for the incredible people she has met along the way -- people she has taught as well as people she has learned from, she enjoys the vibrant energy generated in a room full of potters working together at all different skill levels. In such an environment, there is exchange of ideas, of techniques; everyone grows from the experience.

Much of her work is inspired by nature. Her nested bowls will often resemble the petals of a flower as it unfurls into many layers. Likewise the simplicity of a single bowl, both delicate and imperfect in its shape evoke the singularity of a unique organic form.

Erin regards her work in clay as a rich and rewarding journey as there is always something new to learn. She has yet to tire of the endless possibilities that clay and glaze have to offer. To form from a soft piece of wet clay, an object that is both useful and beautiful is a phenomenon that still amazes her. Transferring that experience in others as she teaches as well as having others respond to her work -- engaging with an object's shape and color, texture and weight are each sources of great satisfaction.