Rebecca Potts
February 6- March 1, 2026
Opening Friday, February 6, 6-9pm
“Demons are summoned by the power of their own name”, my friend once told me as a teenager. My last name is Potts. People are their names. Names are magic, names are spells.
On the one hand, you may think my people were potters, wouldn’t that be easy and obvious? But research also says Pott was an Old English word for a hole in the ground or a pit, a distinguishing feature of the land where people lived.
Potters, dwellers of pitted land, it all ties to earth, to dirt. I am a farmer’s and a coal miner’s grandchild, both diggers of the earth- one making magic in the form of food, one taking rocky treasures to make energy. The earth has been under my familial fingernails for generations, whether it be in mineral form, the land where my ancestors lived, the mining of their histories or in the form of these ceramic sculptures.
Animism, mysticism, and alchemical transformations are prime sources for these works, tracing the evolution (and revolution) of the soul. Part of the alchemical process in either spiritual or laboratory practice is solve et coagula – the dissolving and reconfiguring of an element into a new and more perfect union of its constituencies. The various processes of creating sculpture, ceramic in particular, and the path of alchemical transformation share a similar layering of procedures and materials. The search for the perfection of the prima materia through the process of ora et laboria (pray and work) is part of the journey towards the Great Work.
Artist Megan Sullivan interviewed Rebecca Potts on the occasion of her LUMP exhibition:
Megan: We’ve known each other for 30 years. And in that time, your work has often possessed an anthropomorphic quality that seems important. I wonder if your art-making is a way for you to see something, to represent something, or to teach something?
Rebecca: Thirty, whoa! Thinking back, there was a lot of anthropomorphization of both things, particularly tools and body organs. I don’t think I quite understood animism yet or my own connection to it, but it was about inhabiting function. Earlier, I think I was seeing the parts as their own elemental beings. Now the scale has jumped up a level of sorts, to taking whole (beings, creatures, external body parts rather than organs) and making wholes (plural)- as I attempt to grapple with the idea of wholeness, which essentially collapses into parts.
Megan: Yes, I remember you making very tenuous “spoons” that a Giacometti sculpture might use. We both went to Cranbrook after UNC-G and studied with Heather McGill. I am curious how your work evolved there. What are some of the most influential pieces, thoughts, or practices that you still work with from that time? Cranbrook is a special place. Feel free to discuss that too.
Rebecca: This question is tough. For one thing, the foundry in the sculpture department was defunct, not in use, and I was not equipped to resurrect it. I veered totally in the other direction, low tech, tiny and ephemeral. Paper sculpture, cast sheets of caulk, sewn rubber. My second year, I had the biggest studio and made the teeniest tiniest work. One thing I remember Heather saying was that I had a messed (she used a different word) up sense of color in the best way, which was totally news to me. The thing I most loved about Cranbrook is there is a little statuary area with a bust of Zeus and there’s a trick stone in front of it that during the 4 nonfreezing months of the year triggers something that shoots water out of Zeus’s eyes at the viewer. I loved taking people on a walk of the grounds and suggesting they move a little closer to get the best look.
Megan: Speaking of color; do you find working with glazes in your ceramic work (that you’ll be showing at Lump) difficult to work with? Things don’t always turn out exactly as expected, right?
Rebecca: Glazing is this whole adventure where you’ve already taken all this care to make a thing and it’s survived its first trial by fire and then there’s this whole new opportunity to ruin it! It’s a balance of daring to imagine what you might want to achieve and spinning the wheel once it’s in the kiln. It’s exciting once it stops being terrifying.
Megan: Ugh, sounds like an analogy for life! So, tell me more about this current body of work and how you moved from tiny, ephemeral pieces to pieces that may not be large, but are very imposing in their subject matter and confidence.
Rebecca: It came about in two ways. One, I began working in ceramics again during a residency at Greenwich House Pottery in NYC in late 2023. Two, I was attempting to merge two bodies/modalities of work- one that was figurative and floor/pedestal based, and one that was more representations of energy and wall based- a joining of body and spirit. Rather than just jamming the two together, the resulting work hints at the moments of transition. Just before or after, in the midst of becoming something else, or freshly emerged as, or in guidance to becoming. Transit totems. Ceramic seems to activate this quality in the record of its own transformation- from the vitrification of the clay to patterns made by molten glaze.
Megan: I agree 100%. And I appreciate that you can see that about your own work, process, and material properties. These pieces seem complete. We also discussed how to complete this interview! You suggested I ask where you see this work going? Or you suggested something more fun such as; what do these pieces hold in their pockets? But I think I’ll combine those and ask; where do you see the things these pieces hold in their pockets going?
Rebecca: HaH! Yes! Well, pretty much everything in the show has a pocket in it. Many are mouths and eyes, some pouches or voids. It got me thinking about people and their pockets, or purses or backpacks- what do we find in them? Chewing gum and crumpled up ones and receipts, lipstick, lunch tupperware -or something more interesting? I think the thinking is no matter what, if there’s a pocket it ends up getting filled. So it’s better to fill it sooner intentionally than later with just ballast. The End.
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Rebecca Potts was born in Columbus, OH yet grew up in Greensboro, NC. Potts received a BFA from UNC Greensboro and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, both in sculpture. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan ME) and Greenwich House Pottery (New York, NY). Group shows include Feature, Inc, Franklin Parrasch Gallery and the Jane Hartsook Gallery in New York City.
She has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY for over two decades.
This is her first solo show.
