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.
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.
