Marcia Selsor
Beginning in 1966 to the Philadelphia College of Art now the Philadelphia University of the Arts studied ceramics with Bill Daley, Petras Vaskys, Paula Winokur, Julia Jackson and Roland Jahn and never looked back. In 1967 I began firing Raku that year when Paul Soldner was giving a workshop at Wallingford Art Center for local colleges…during the winter in the snow. I have been firing raku ever since, plus stoneware, soda, wood, and alternative types of firing processes. I gained a great education on building kilns while in college. Graduated with a BFA in 1970. I moved to the Mid-west to continue studies in Ceramics at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale with Nick Vergette and Bill Boysen graduating with an MFA in Ceramics in 1974. Worked on the first 1% for Art national commission awarded to Nicholas Vergette for the reflecting pool and fountain at the Federal Building in Memphis.
In 1975, I began teaching at Eastern Montana College, now Montana State University-Billings where I taught for 25 years. I learned to appreciate the grandeur of the mountains, the raw vivaciousness of wild horses, trout fishing, good friends, Yellowstone Park, self-reliance, hot potting in sub-zero weather, and all the rigors of living in the Last Best Place. One day driving home from Billings to Huntley, I passed a field of Black Angus in fresh Spring grass and immediately thought RAKU! Once when I had a group of students up in the Pryor Mountains to look for clay, we went to the top of Dryhead Overlook a herd of running wild horses with their Spring foals emerged for the mist and surrounded us before disappearing down a coulee. Another magical Montana moment inspired me to draw running horses on Raku.
I was awarded 2 Senior Fulbright Scholars’ Awards; the first was in 1985-86 where I traveled to 48 pottery centers and documented the ethnographic traditions from several origins: Celtic, Iberian, Roman, and Islamic found across Spain. I also published a book of drawings on the pottery of Agost using the Centro Agost my home base with many thanks to Ilse Schutz, the Director. In 1994, I taught at the Tashkent Institute of the Arts and study historical ceramics in Uzbekistan. Colleagues took me to ancient cities along the Silk Road including Khiva, Samarkund, and Bukhara and a remote town near the Kazak border where I gave a talk in a high school and was the first American the students had ever seen. I have served on the Technical staff for Ceramics Monthly, President of Potters Council, and as Director-at-Large for the National Council for The Education of Ceramic Art (NCECA).
In 2006, we moved to the South Border of Texas in Brownsville so my husband, Matt, could have his dream job at a Research University at the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy. I worked for 8 months as the Interim Executive Director at the Brownsville Art Museum and taught an Academic year at University of Texas at Brownsville as a guest lecturer in Ceramics and Art History. I served on the boards of Leadership Brownsville, UTB Center for Civic Engagement and the Brownsville Museum of Art. While Montana provided much growth for me as an artist, I found the exotic birds of the Gulf Coast, the Coastal Sky, and the Gulf as well as the Border Wall working their way into my art. We moved back to Montana at the end of 2016. I am so happy to have returned to my muse, Montana, to create in my home studio in Red Lodge. As of my 70th birthday, I am a full-time Ceramic Artist, Writer, Teacher, Alchemist, and Magician! Keep scrolling down to see some of my greatest adventures in clay. I was recently voted into the Northwest Designer Craftsmen Group.
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