Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident 2026
Angela Tilley is a ceramic artist and 26-year veteran of the United States Navy, where she attained the rank of Senior Chief Petty Officer. She spent more than nine years overseas, including tours in Italy, Bahrain, Germany, and Iraq, before retiring in 2017.
After a deployment to Iraq in 2010, Angela discovered pottery, an experience that changed the trajectory of her life. The quiet focus of working at the wheel offered a counterpoint to military life and began a relationship with clay that eventually grew into both an artistic practice and a commitment to building community.
In 2018, Angela founded All Hands Pottery Studio, a community clay studio in Norfolk, Virginia, serving hundreds of artists each month. Her work is primarily wheel-thrown stoneware and draws from sources ranging from Neolithic Chinese Banshan pottery to mid-century German “Fat Lava” ceramics and historical animal-form pouring vessels. Her work explores the intersection of disciplined form, bold color, function, and play.
Angela is passionate about art, community outreach, and creating spaces where people can connect through clay. She lives in Norfolk with her husband, Mark, and their four rescue beagles, Annie, Oakley, Walter, and Scarlett.
My work is grounded in building community. I am interested in objects that bring people together to share sustenance, joy, sorrow, and memory. The framework of my life was shaped by a 26-year military career, where precision, discipline, and attention to detail were as essential as teamwork and community. That foundation continues to shape my approach to clay through tightly controlled forms, clean lines, and intentional volume.
In contrast, my surfaces explore bold color and visual tension, reflecting a more personal and expressive language that developed after my transition to civilian life. This relationship between control and freedom sits at the center of my practice: structure provides a framework, while the surface creates space for movement, intuition, and play.
I draw from mid-century German “Fat Lava” ceramics, with their saturated color and dynamic surfaces, as well as ancient Etruscan, Persian, and Mesoamerican animal pouring vessels. I am also drawn to Neolithic Banshan pottery, where precision, balance, and form carry a quiet strength. These traditions offer different relationships between utility, expression, and the human impulse to gather around objects.
Through functional pottery, I bring these influences into conversation. I make objects intended to participate in people’s lives—to pour, serve, hold, and gather around—while carrying both structure and energy, memory and joy. Each piece becomes an ongoing negotiation between discipline and intuition, clarity and movement, and an exploration of how strength can exist alongside freedom