Lisa Conway – Red Lodge Clay Center

Lisa ConwayPortland, Oregon


Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2022

Lisa Conway was born in Detroit, Michigan and received a B.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, her M.F.A. in ceramics from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and was awarded a full fellowship to study at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Lisa has taught ceramics at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Portland Community College and the Oregon College of Art and Craft. She is currently Head of the Ceramics Area and Chairperson of the Art Department at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. Lisa has completed several prominent artist residencies around the country, most recently at Anderson Ranch Art Center in Colorado during a teaching sabbatical in 2010. She shows her work in solo and group exhibitions nation-wide, and is represented in several public art collections in the Pacific Northwest. She was most notably included in the Oregon Biennial exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in 2003. Lisa lives in Portland, Oregon, and works out of a ceramics studio in her home.

I want to make beautiful objects that engage the viewer on a physical level. I want my pieces to remind us of our own bodies, whether they be blushing or sagging, ticklish, tender, erect or deflated. I hope that by strongly referencing the plant world in my work, I can avoid direct references to any specific human anatomy. My goal is to create pieces that evoke these physical sensations, and ultimately the subtle emotions and human relationships that go along with them. Like plants growing towards the sun, I believe sexuality is a major force around which we gravitate.