“In wire I am creating the edges of what is not there; in clay, I am creating the essence of what is”
Jill Bonovitz named as Moore’s 2019 Visionary Woman Awards Honoree
Jill has her MS from Columbia University, and did post grad work at Moore College of Art, she has participated in many group shows and had numerous solo exhibitions including one in 2019 at Moore when she was honored as a Visionary Woman. She serves on several boards at cultural institutions in Philadelphia and New York, and her work is in public and private collections including the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, the PMA, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland.
What The Clay Studio means to me:
When I left Moore College of Art in 1974, there weren’t many opportunities to transition from art school to a communal place to continue working in clay. Luckily, our Ceramics teacher, Ken Vavrek, and four of us who were students at the time, moved into a loft building to collaborate and set up a place where we could work together as we furthered our artistic skills and developed our work.
This beginning morphed into The Clay Studio with a primary mission of providing this transition to other artists and remains so to this day. The Clay Studio has grown into an international center for everything having to do with clay; resident artists, Claymobile, classes, gallery, community activities, and the shop.
What The Clay Studio did was to enable me to begin a career as an artist and continue with the opportunity to make a contribution to the field in which I have spent my entire career. Without The Clay Studio, I may not have remained in the world of Ceramics.
