Julia Galloway
Julia Galloway is a utilitarian potter and professor. She teaches ceramics at the University of Montana, Missoula. Julia has exhibited across the United States, Canada, and Asia and her work is included in the collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC, Long Beach Art Museum, Long Beach CA, the Ceramics Research Center at the Arizona State Art Museum, Alfred Ceramics Art Museum at Alfred University, the Dinnerware Museum in Ann Arbor Michigan and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Julia has served on the board of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and currently on the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts and is Director at Large on the National Council for the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). Her work has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter, Art and Perception and Clay Times. In addition, her work has been included in publications such as Mastering the Potter’s Wheel by Ben Carter, A Complete Guide to mid-Range Glazes by Jon Britt, as well as The Ceramic Continuum from the Archie Bray Foundation
Julia is interested in all aspects in the field of the ceramic arts from making pottery, jurying exhibitions, studying ceramics from other cultures, writing about pottery and service to emerging artist. She has juried the NCECA National Exhibition, the Zainesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics and the 500 Vases publication. Julia is dedicated to education, whether be on a traditional college campus, a crafts school or local arts center; she has taught more than two hundred workshops, demonstrations and lectures. In addition, she has developed service based educational websites: “Montana Clay,” “the field guide for ceramics artisans,” “the library of Cups” as well as “Making History”
Julia was raised in Boston and she started throwing in high school, buying her first wheel with her babysitting money. She kept her wheel in her bedroom and carried her pots in a shoebox to high school to be fired. Julia attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University for her BFA degree and then the Massachusetts College of Art as a Post-Baccalaureate student. Julia attended the University of Colorado-Boulder for her MFA degree, and during her studies she was a visiting scholar the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design to study contemporary crafts and the history of pottery. Julia has traveled through the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy and Turkey. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. She was a professor and then Chair of the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, living in western New York for nine years. In 2009 she moved to Montana where she was the Director for the School of Art for five years, and rotated into full time teaching since 2014. Julia lives in Missoula, making pottery in her home studio and teaching ceramics, professional practices, and pedagogy at the University of Montana.
Julia is interested in pottery that is joyous; beautiful objects with meaning that weave into our daily lives through use. Pottery decorates our living spaces with character and elegance. Teapots celebrate our tea drinking ritual; a pitcher adorns the mantel when not in use; a mug with slight texture inside the handle allows our fingers to discover uniqueness. Pottery is a reflection and celebration of ourselves.
She always wonders, how is she nourished by where she lives and finds utilitarian pottery the best method to express her ideas. Handmade pottery is naturally rich in ideas and metaphor; pottery seeps into our houses, our kitchens, and enriches our lives. Pottery weaves into our daily lives through use and decorates our living spaces with character and elegance; pottery is joyous. Pottery is a reflection of our reality, our fantasy and ourselves. She makes pottery out of porcelain clay. It is extremely sensitive and responsive to the human touch when it’s soft; when fired it becomes dense and strong. t is this responsive nature of clay that continues to interest me. It responds to your touch, then you respond to it. The same happens in the firing process with glaze materials and the atmosphere of the kiln. Clay is a supportive and demanding medium for the creative journey of making. She is insistent about making things with her hands. The need for beautiful domestic objects and the instinctual drive to create things are tremendous dance partners for idea and desire. Utilitarian pottery supports and represents our intimate rituals of nourishment and celebration.