Janice Cook’s pots have traveled places she would love to go, to Japan and Guinea Bissau, the Ukraine, New Zealand and parts in between. She has been a full time potter for fifty years with studios in Amherst, Massachusetts and Tempe, Arizona, before settling in southern New Mexico in 1980. She works in porcelain enjoying the choreography of her shapes and the dazzling colors of the slips and stains she uses to decorate.
Collaborative work with Ariel Gregory
When the pandemic hit, I was separated from my family. I, Ariel Gregory was in Montana; My mother, Janice Cook was in New Mexico. To keep me sane in my isolation, my mother and I talked every day for several years. One day, she proposed a collaboration. We would each make a small figure, a self portrait of how we felt in that moment. Then we shipped the figures to one another and built the environments for each other’s figures. In Montana, I felt stranded in the frozen Northern wastes. In New Mexico, my mother and stepfather were keeping the street corner food bank stand stocked with fresh hen eggs. These sculptures are a document of our time apart, but connected. You can see more of Ariel’s work at arielgregory.com
