About Noel Bailey Ceramics and Pottery
Noel Bailey is a utilitarian potter, currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Art degree at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
His education has consisted of a variety of opportunities, including an apprenticeship with professional potter Bill Wilson, numerous summer residencies at Laloba Ranch Clay Center, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, as well as an undergraduate degree in Art Education at the University of Northern Colorado. In 2006, He opened up shop and began working full time as a potter in Montrose, Colorado.
Noel was born and raised in Montrose, in South West Colorado. He is passionate about playing in the outdoors, on the rivers, cliffs, mountains, snow, and ice.
Noel Bailey Ceramics Artist Statement
My pottery is intended to celebrate the acts and rituals of containing, displaying, and consuming. From the daily comfort of sipping a morning's brew, to the rare setting of the table with my Grandmother's most precious dishes, pottery is a means to enrich and preserve traditions both minute and monumental.
I am drawn to an aesthetic that references a lifestyle heavily influenced by and connected to the surrounding natural environment. Gracefully eroded river pathways, elegant rock faces, snow softened landscapes, vertical ice formations – all are sources for abstraction and ornamentation. The pairing of this aesthetic with domestic objects is significant – promoting identity through regional geography, the idea of "local," and an awareness of the source of life sustaining food.
Clay, with its responsiveness and allure to be fashioned into form, imparts a richness and joy to the discovery involved in making. The application of fire, and the resulting melt is a vast source for exploration and fascination. The delicacy and permanence, the window that ceramics is to past cultures. I love the accessibility of pottery, the need for the vessel, and the ceremony of eating and drinking that unites all beings.