Maggie Jaszczak is a potter and mixed-media artist originally from Ontario, Canada. She completed her undergraduate studies in Canada and earned her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 2013. Jaszczak has participated in numerous ceramic residency programs including Penland School of Craft in Penland, North Carolina, New Taipei Ceramics Museum in New Taipei City, Taiwan, and The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. She has exhibited widely, and taught classes and workshops throughout the United States and Canada. She and her husband live in rural Minnesota where they work as studio artists.
As a great admirer the Shaker design maxim that ‘beauty rests in utility’, I make wheel thrown and hand built pots that draw on the quiet, archetypal objects of basic function. Minimal in form and surface, and hovering between the primitive and refined, pieces are built roughly by hand or thrown on the wheel, and then scraped and pared down to achieve their final form. Mostly neutral surfaces emphasize the subtleties of material and process as the primary decorative elements – dragged grog, finger marks, and the layering of white slips and terra sigillata with glazes.
