ARTIST STATEMENT

Several years ago I was walking through the Minneapolis Airport listening to a podcast about the Wandering Albatross. It is the largest of the albatross breeds with a wingspan measuring 11 feet, and it can keep aloft in wind currents over the southern oceans for a month without returning to land. This bird’s population is dwindling on account of industrial line fishing. The Wandering Albatross is being decapitated at the rate of one bird every five minutes. I estimated that I'd been walking through the airport for fifteen minutes: three albatrosses. Right there by gate C15, I was actually brought to my knees, stunned by this bycatch carnage. But what could I do about this? Quit my job, leave my studio and head out for civil disobedience? Throw myself in the path of industrial fishing factories? Not very effective or realistic. However, I am a potter and a teacher, and I can make visible something that is generally unseen.

Making pottery is how I understand the world. For this project, I am making covered jars, urns really, for endangered species. Urns are traditionally used to hold ashes from cremation. I am making urns for endangered species of the United States–species in my backyard. On each urn is an image of an endangered, threatened or special concern species. The urns are displayed empty, as most of the species are still alive–the emptiness is a sign of hope.

INSIDE OF METAPHOR: LIFE AS A POTTER

BIOGRAPHY

Julia Galloway is a utilitarian potter and professor of Ceramics at the University of Montana. Raised in Boston, Galloway started throwing pots in high school, buying her first wheel with her babysitting money. She kept her wheel in her bedroom and carried her pots in a shoebox to her high school to be fired. She attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University for her BFA, then the Massachusetts College of Art for post-baccalaureate studies. She earned her MFA from the University of Colorado-Boulder during which she was a visiting scholar at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, studying contemporary crafts and the history of pottery.

Galloway is extraordinarily active in the ceramic arts, not only making pots, but jurying exhibitions, studying ceramics from other cultures, and writing about pottery. She has juried the NCECA National Exhibition, the Zainesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics and the 500 Vases publication. She has served on the boards of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, and is Director at Large on the National Council for the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). Galloway's work has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter, Art and Perception and Clay Times. She has given more than two hundred workshops, demonstrations and lectures. In addition, she has developed the service-based educational websites Montana Clay, field guide for ceramics artisans, Library of Cups and Making History.

Galloway's work has been exhibited across the United States, Canada, and Asia. It is included in the collections of the Smithnonian's Renwick Gallery, the Long Beach Art Museum, the Ceramics Research Center at the Arizona State Art Museum, the Alfred Ceramics Art Museum at Alfred University, the Dinnerware Museum in Ann Arbor Michigan and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Galloway was awarded a United States Artist Grant and named a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Montana--the first person in the arts to receive the recognition since 1986. In 2023 she was named Artist of the Year by the Ceramics Arts Network and Ceramics Monthly publication.