Will Dickert

Will Dickert is a studio potter and educator in Asheville, NC. He creates stoneware pottery and vessels in his shared studio space situated among a vibrant community of makers and artists along the French Broad River.  He was raised in Bristol, Virginia, the middle of three brothers, and has a strong affinity and love for the people and natural environment of the Southern Appalachian region and Blue Ridge Mountains.  He completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus in Ceramics from the University of North Carolina Asheville, and as a post baccalaureate student received a North Carolina Art Education licensure. Teaching and exposing his community to the craft and art of clay is a passion that continues to play a significant role in his involvement in the arts as a whole.  His work is wood fired using a number of techniques and kilns both traditional and contemporary in design and effect. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and is represented in a number of private and public collections, as well as renowned contemporary galleries. Will enjoys live music, vegetable gardening, hiking and backpacking, summer camps, cooking, eating, Jeopardy!, tennis, beer, baseball, skiing, and is a proud new parent with his brilliant and beautiful wife.

I am most interested in exploration of form in my pottery.   I use the woodfiring process to illuminate my work with the naturally occurring effects inherent to firing primarily unglazed stoneware clay bodies with wood.  The methods I use in my studio practice split my work into two intermingled yet distinctive explorations of form: wheel thrown pots with a focus on function, and hand built vessels that reference utility and expand  my definition of functional ceramics and sculptural objects. My work and practice are influenced by a strong sense of sentimentality for my family and friends, my recollection of childhood, and my home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southern Appalachia.  I seek a sense of quiet rhythm and evolution through both persistent, deliberate experiential learning and an embrace of serendipity and chance throughout my practice.   The direct record of response to touch and manipulation of the raw material as well as the involved, deliberate loading and firing of my work in wood-burning kilns provides me with a tenuous and exciting balance.  By using a holistic approach encompassing my senses, the materials, history of process,  my results,  and observation,  my intention  is  to elicit a feeling or sentiment that relates to time, place, people, purpose and impermanence.