Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2026
Todd Pentico is an angler and potter originally from the Midwest. He earned an MFA in ceramics from the University of Arkansas. His recent work and research focus on form and proportion in both pottery and fly tying. Pentico resides in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Helena, Montana, where he supports the Archie Bray Clay Business.
In my creative journey, both fly fishing and pottery serve as disciplines through which I explore the interplay between attraction and persistence. Casting a line over and over, I am drawn to the elegance of minimal motion and imagining the behavior of a feeding fish in an uninterrupted water environment. Similarly, each vessel emerges from simple forms and measured gestures—a process pared down to its essentials, with the essential goal of creating natural attraction for the hand.
The formal element of simplicity guides my approach: in fly fishing, it is the distilled movement and the unadorned fly; in pottery, the clean curve of a handle or the spare silhouette of a cup. Attraction surfaces in the dialogue between human and environment, hand and clay, angler and fish. Each act is a negotiation—an invitation to engage, to respond, to be patient and see what emerges.