Location: Shelburne Falls, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: By appointment; one day’s notice appreciated

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, Hilltown Open Studio Tour

ABOUT:

Mary Barringer is a studio potter, writer, and editor whose studio is based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. A potter for more than fifty years, she has worked across functional pottery, handbuilt forms, teaching, ceramic history, and writing. In the early 2000s, Barringer became editor of The Studio Potter, a role she held for twelve years. She was drawn to the journal because it offered a space for potters to write about the lives, questions, and ideas behind their work, not only the technical processes of making.

Barringer’s path in clay began after studying at Bennington, where choosing pottery became a way to question old hierarchies between fine art and craft. After college, she opened a pottery studio in Hartford with a friend, making work, teaching classes, and selling pots. Over time, her practice moved between functional pottery and handbuilt work, eventually returning to smaller vessels that carry both use and thought.

For Barringer, pottery is a deeply social field. Pots are handled, lived with, exchanged, and remembered; they connect makers to users and people to one another. Her work and writing reflect a lifelong commitment to ceramics as an accessible and thoughtful form of art. Barringer is a host artist on the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, and her downtown Shelburne Falls studio can also be visited by appointment.

Location: Shelburne Falls, MA & The Handle Factory Community Clay Center

Open Hours/Schedule: Private home studio, no regular visiting hours. Open during the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail annual April studio tour; teaching/classes at Handle Factory Community Clay Center

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, Hilltown Open Studio Tour

Additional Notes: Community studio founder

ABOUT:

Molly Cantor is a potter based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, where her practice has grown through making, teaching, and creating places for others to continue working in clay. She first came to Western Massachusetts in 1988 to attend graduate school in education at UMass Amherst, but left after a year and stayed in the region. Originally an English major, Cantor came to pottery through the simple pleasure of making objects she could use, drawn to the idea that a handmade thing could become part of daily life.

After working in bakeries and continuing to make pots on her own, Cantor returned to school for ceramics, earning her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 1996 before completing a spring concentration at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. At Penland, she studied with Matthew Metz and Linda Sikora, learning more about ornate functional pots and firing a wood kiln for the first time, an experience that later inspired her to build her own.

Cantor began producing pottery for galleries, craft shops, and customers across the region, but over time sought more connection than studio production alone could offer. She later opened a studio gallery, expanded into teaching, and founded The Handle Factory Community Clay Center in Shelburne Falls after realizing many of her students needed a place to keep making beyond class. The center offers classes and programs for adults, children, and teens, extending Cantor’s practice into community education and access to clay. Cantor is a participant in the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, where visitors can see and purchase her work during the annual April studio tour. Her pottery can also be found at ENJOY in Shelburne Falls. In addition to ceramics, her creative practice has expanded into puppetry.

Location: Shelburne Falls, MA 

Open Hours/Schedule: Private home studio, no regular visiting hours. Open during the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail annual April studio tour; demos at Historic Deerfield

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail

ABOUT:

Steve Earp is a potter, writer, and scholar based in Shelburne, Massachusetts, where he works in redware and delftware traditions rooted in New England ceramic history. Originally from Iowa, Earp first came to Massachusetts in 2002 after moving east with his wife, whose family is from the region. From 1997 to 2003, he worked at Old Sturbridge Village, first as an interpreter demonstrating in the Hervey Brooks pottery, and later as Master Potter, making pots for the museum gift shop, special orders, custom projects, and research connected to the Curatorial Department. That experience deepened his engagement with New England redware, traditional decorative arts, and the long history of pottery making in the region.

Earp makes mostly functional forms with simple glazes and richly developed decoration. He throws much of his work on a treadle wheel he built years ago, using techniques that include slip trailing, sgraffito, marbled clay, overglaze painting, and sponging. Working with earthenware from Sheffield Pottery, including clay connected to the region’s historic pottery traditions, Earp approaches redware and delftware not as historical quotation, but as living visual languages still capable of contemporary expression.

His practice is closely tied to research and writing. In essays such as “A Potter Considers the Traditional Decorative Arts,” published in Ceramics in America in 2018, Earp examines the histories, assumptions, and ongoing relevance of traditional Euro-American ceramic styles. His studio sits near the Deerfield River, where visitors often walk toward the gully beside the shop to look out over the water. A member of the Asparagus Valley Potters Guild and the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, Earp opens his studio during the annual spring tour. His work can also be found through his website, selected shows, craft galleries, the Shelburne Falls Arts Cooperative, and occasional demonstrations at Historic Deerfield.

Location: Conway, MA studio, near South River

Open Hours/Schedule: Private home studio, no regular visiting hours. Open during scheduled events.

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Local artist; regional pottery events

Additional Notes: Potter; kiln builder/consultant; workshop teacher

ABOUT:

Ben Eberle is a potter based in Conway, Massachusetts, near the South River. He and his wife, Dani, first visited the home that would bring them to Western Massachusetts in early March 2014, standing above the river as the spring thaw moved through the valley. For Eberle, the feeling of home was immediate. Two weeks later, their offer was accepted, and they moved to the region that June.

An English major before turning fully toward ceramics, Eberle taught high school ceramics in the Boston area before moving west. He and Dani later worked at Snow Farm, where Eberle spent several years as studio assistant, and property management roles. That experience deepened the practical knowledge that continues to shape his practice: not only how pots are made, but how studios, kilns, and ceramic communities are built and maintained.

Eberle makes functional pottery shaped by pattern, gesture, volume, graceful curves, and a sense of airiness. His firing process embraces uncertainty, asking him to trust both the forming of the pot and the atmosphere of the kiln. He is also known for his kiln knowledge, helping other artists construct, rebuild, and adjust firing systems. Eberle began making pots full time in 2021 as demand for his work grew. His work can be found through his website, studio sales, workshops, and selected regional pottery events.

Location: 86 Leyden Rd. Greenfield MA 01301

Open Hours/Schedule: Open by appointment and during the annual Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail spring tour

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail 

Additional Notes: Founder of Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail; Asparagus Valley Pottery  member for 25+ years

ABOUT:

Lucy Fagella is a functional potter based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where she works from a renovated barn studio on the homestead she shares with her wife. Her ceramics include mugs, pitchers, bowls, platters, citrus juicers, serving pieces, cremation urns, and biodegradable urns. Most of her work is wheel-thrown, carved, glazed, and fired in oxidation to Cone 6, using stoneware and porcelain sourced from Sheffield Pottery Supply in Western Massachusetts.

Fagella studied ceramics and sculpture at Alfred University, earning a BFA with a minor in art education. After graduating, she made pots, taught high school art on Long Island, and later moved to New York’s Hudson Valley, where she farmed and worked in an environmental and social justice community. She came to Western Massachusetts in the early 1990s, drawn by the countryside, farms, and creative community, and gradually built a full-time life as a working potter here.

Visiting Fagella’s studio begins before reaching the door: a trail of flowers leads into the working barn, where her studio sits above the chickens below. Inside, with her dog Blossom nearby and the sounds of the homestead rising from beneath the floorboards, function feels less like a category of pottery and more like a way of living. Her vessels move between the everyday and the ceremonial, holding food, flowers, ashes, memory, and care.

Fagella has been part of the Asparagus Valley Potters Guild for more than 25 years and was one of the founders of the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, where visitors can see and purchase her work during the annual spring tour. Her studio is also open by appointment, and her pottery and organic urn collection are available through her website.

Location: 908 Ryan Rd, Northampton, MA 01062

Open Hours/Schedule: Open by appointment and during the annual Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail  Spring Tour

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail 

ABOUT:

Jamie Guggina is a potter based in Northampton, Massachusetts, whose path to clay began almost by accident. While studying painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, he took a clay class to fulfill a three-dimensional art requirement and quickly fell in love with the material. The shift was so complete that he stayed in school for two additional years to complete a degree in ceramics before setting up his own studio.
Guggina’s pots still carry his painterly background through carefully painted surfaces, delicate line work, and sgraffito decoration. His practice moves between clay bodies and firing methods, with wood, gas, and soda kilns all located on his Northampton property. This range of processes allows surface, atmosphere, and flame to shape the finished ceramics in distinct ways.

Guggina moved to Western Massachusetts drawn by the region’s natural setting, atmosphere, and the piece of land he found in Northampton. The property offered the space to establish a studio and build the kilns that support his practice. He first joined the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail as its first guest artist before later becoming part of the pottery trail group. His pottery can be seen and purchased through the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, by appointment at his studio, and through seasonal online sales on his website.

Location: 1 Stage Rd. Westhampton, MA 01027

Open Hours/Schedule: Open by appointment and during the annual Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

ABOUT:

Robbie Heidinger is a ceramic artist based in Western Massachusetts whose work grows from the intersection of painting, movement, and clay. She first imagined a life in dance, then studied painting and animation at NYU before discovering clay ten years later through an adult education class at Parsons. For Heidinger, clay offered a three-dimensional canvas. She earned her MFA in ceramics from RISD in 1995 and later moved to Western Massachusetts with her family. One of the first things she did after moving was bring kiln bricks from Connecticut, given to her by her friend Aimee Houghton, and built a kiln. Heidinger joined the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour as a host artist, where visitors can see and purchase her work during the annual studio tour.

Location: Brushworks Arts & Industry, 221 Pine St, Studio #336, Florence, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Open Studios at Brushworks; studio open during the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail and the Hilltown Open Studio Tour

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail; Brushworks Open Studios; Hilltown Open Studio Tour

ABOUT:

Tiffany Hilton is a studio potter based in Florence, Massachusetts. She discovered clay in 1992 while studying at SUNY New Paltz and quickly became devoted to the potter’s wheel, practicing until, as she describes it, her heart and hands were speaking the same language.

Before becoming self-employed as a potter, Hilton spent over a decade as a librarian while continuing to work in clay. She later apprenticed with Kit Cornell in Exeter, New Hampshire, where she learned not only technical skills, but also how to teach, fire kilns, and build community through pottery. After years in the Boston area, she found herself moving farther west in search of space, affordability, and a sustainable way to live as an artist. When she arrived in Western Massachusetts, she quickly fell in love with the region and made it her home.
For the past fifteen years, Hilton has worked and taught from her studio at Brushworks Arts & Industry in Florence. Located in the former Pro-phy-lac-tic Brush Company building, Brushworks now houses many local artists, studios, workshops, and creative businesses. Her functional pottery is made to be used, shared, and folded into daily life, from custom dinnerware and wedding registry orders to smaller pieces available through her Etsy shop. Hilton is a host artist on the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail and also participates in Open Studios at Brushworks Arts & Industry.

Location: Project Art, Cummington, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open by appointment and scheduled events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Project Art; Ferrin Contemporary

Additional Notes: Co-founder of Project Art; Resident Artist

ABOUT:

Sergei Isupov is an Estonian-American ceramic sculptor internationally known for highly detailed narrative works that combine figure, surface, and story. Born in Ukraine and trained in Estonia, Isupov works with traditional hand-building and sculpting techniques, using stains and clear glaze to create painterly surfaces on ceramic forms. His sculptures often bring together human and animal hybrids, surreal imagery, and balancing between layers of two- and three-dimensional narratives.

For Isupov, the human figure becomes a site of transformation, memory, humor, and contradiction. Painted imagery moves across the surfaces of his forms, complicating the relationship between body, image, and object. His work reflects a belief that everything surrounding him can be processed and transformed into art, with human beings and their diversity at the center of his practice.

Isupov co-founded Project Art with Leslie Ferrin and has lived and worked on the Cummington property since 2006. Since 2010, he has divided his year between Tallinn, Estonia and Cummington with his wife, ceramic artist Kadri Pärnamets, and their daughter Roosi. Represented by Ferrin Contemporary, his work is held in major museum collections and has been exhibited internationally. Visitors to Project Art encounter Isupov’s work throughout the galleries and gardens, including his mosaic sculpture Miss Comet, made with shards donated by the community. Sergei sells block printed tee-shirts, hand made tools and small works through his online shop.

Location: 108 Mt Rd. Cummington, MA 01026

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open by appointment and scheduled events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

Additional Notes: Founding member of the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

ABOUT:

Christy Knox is a potter who has lived among the woods of Western Massachusetts for more than twenty-five years. Her work is rooted in the natural landscape around her, especially the large garden she has tended over time. Color, texture, pattern, and organic form all move through her pottery, reflecting the changing and fleeting beauty she observes in the woods, garden, and daily life.

Knox has worked in clay for more than forty years, making functional pottery from high-temperature stoneware. Her work is lead-free, food safe, and made for everyday use in the home, including the dishwasher, microwave, and oven. For Knox, function is not separate from beauty; the joy of a pot is found through handling, use, and the daily interaction between object and person.

As a maker, Knox takes pleasure in creating form and composing surfaces, whether on the wall of a vessel, the finial of a teapot, or the foot of a bowl. Her pottery attempts to hold a particular moment in time: the visual rhythm of a garden, the relationship between surface and shape, and the joy of bringing handmade objects into daily life. Knox is a founding member and host artist of Hilltown 6, where visitors can see and purchase her work during the annual pottery tour; she also offers seasonal sales through her website.

Location: Cummington Community of the Arts

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio visits by appointment

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Project Art; Hilltown Arts Alliance; Cummington Cultural District programs

Additional Notes: Guest artist at Project Art, Cummington, MA

ABOUT:

Beckie Kravetz is a sculptor and professional mask-maker based in Western Massachusetts whose work grows from theater, opera, masks, and the study of character. Trained at the Yale School of Drama in prop-making, woodworking, metalwork, scenic painting, and mask-making, Kravetz developed a deep understanding of how materials can shape gesture, presence, and identity. She also studied traditional mask-making in Guatemala, Mexico, Italy, and as a Fulbright Fellow in Spain, expanding her understanding of masks as objects of performance, ritual, and cultural expression.

For more than two decades, Kravetz worked with the Los Angeles Opera as resident mask-maker, assistant wig master, and principal makeup artist. Through that work, she learned to sculpt through touch, transforming the faces of singers while thinking about the transformation between performer and character. Her masks have appeared in stage, opera, film, and commercial productions, while her studio practice has evolved into ceramic, bronze, and mixed-media heads, busts, figures, and installations.

Kravetz’s sculptures often explore what happens behind the face: the private histories, emotions, and roles carried beneath public appearance. After years in opera, she thinks of her sculptures as visual arias, duets, and choruses, arranging figures like scenes on a stage. Her home and studio are located in the former Cummington School of the Arts, and she is an active member of the current local cultural community. She participates in programs and tours organized by the Cummington Cultural District and Hilltown Arts Alliance as a guest artist at Project Art, and helps organize hands-on community programs for adults and children. Her work can be seen through exhibitions, commissions, and studio visits by appointment.

Location: Cummington, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open during community events and studio tours organized by the Hilltown Arts Alliance and the Cummington Cultural District

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown Arts Alliance; Cummington Cultural District; KlezCummington

Additional Notes: Co-founder of KlezCummington

ABOUT:

Emmett Leader is an artist and land steward based in Cummington, Massachusetts, where his work in clay, wood, local materials, and community practice is rooted in place, memory, and Jewish cultural history. Working primarily with earthenware clay and wood, Leader makes sculptural objects inspired by the material culture of Eastern European Jewish life before World War II, reflecting on both the strengths and vulnerabilities of living in diaspora.

Leader’s relationship to place and material is central to his practice. All of his wheel-thrown work and some of his sculptures are made with clay gathered directly from his hilltown property, connecting his objects to the land he stewards. Raised in rural Vermont, he was deeply affected by the interconnected presence of farmhouses, barns, granges, one-room schoolhouses, churches, and town halls, even as he searched for visual forms that spoke more directly to his own cultural inheritance. Photographs of Eastern European wooden shules, or synagogues, and Jewish gravestones later offered him a language of architecture, text, image, and memory that continues to shape his work.

For Leader, clay can become sculpture, vessel, bread oven, gathering place, and interpretation. He describes his work as a kind of contemporary midrash, bringing inherited histories into present use. For the last fifteen years, he has been revitalizing an 1890s farmstead in Cummington, including a restored barn that functions as both a community gathering space and a functional work of art. The property is also home to KlezCummington, a Yiddish cultural festival co-founded by Leader and his daughter, Rachel Leader, centered on klezmer music, language, food, ritual, learning, and intergenerational community. In addition to his work with KlezCummington, Leader participates in community events and studio tours organized by the Hilltown Arts Alliance and the Cummington Cultural District.

Location: 193 Hill Road, Ashfield, MA 01330

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open during community events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, Hilltown Open Studio Tour

ABOUT:

Maya Machin is a potter based in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where she makes functional, high-fired, wood-fired ceramics from her barn studio at home. Flame, ash, local materials, and the atmosphere of the kiln become part of each finished surface. Wood firing remains central to her practice, both as a firing method and as a communal activity that brings people together through shared labor and time.

Maya first came to Western Massachusetts in 1998 to attend Hampshire College, where the Five College system allowed her to study ceramics at UMass Amherst. After college, she apprenticed with Mark Shapiro, an experience that introduced her to the physical rhythms of a working pottery studio: preparing clay, stacking wood, firing kilns, traveling to shows, and learning through daily proximity to process. What began as an education slowly expanded into a life in clay, rooted in the region’s network of potters and the informal ways knowledge is passed from one studio to another.

At the center of Maya’s work is a belief in the intentionality of the objects we live with. She thinks about how a vessel enters a home, where it belongs, and why it remains in use. A mug, for her, is not just a mug; it can shape the feeling of a morning. She wonders what makes one cup stay at the front of the cabinet while another drifts to the back. Maya is a member of Hilltown 6 and a host artist on the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour. Her work can also be found through PINCH in Northampton and her website.

Location: Brushworks Arts & Industry, Florence, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open during community events and studio tours organized by the Hilltown Arts Alliance and the Cummington Cultural District

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour; Guest artist at Project Art; Brushworks Arts & Industry

Additional Notes: Project Art’s first long-term artist in residence

ABOUT:

Michael McCarthy is a studio potter based in Western Massachusetts, where he makes wheel-thrown functional pottery fired in his wood kiln. Growing up in Albany, New York, he was influenced by the region’s historic stoneware traditions and the methods used to make and fire those pots. His work is made for everyday use, with an emphasis on strong forms, quiet surfaces, and subtle finishes that add to a space without overpowering it.

McCarthy moved to Western Massachusetts in 2000 for a three-year apprenticeship with Mark Shapiro at Stonepool Pottery, which he completed in 2004. In 2006, he helped establish the studios at Project Art in Cummington and became its first long-term artist-in-residence. He later completed artist residencies at Anderson Ranch in Colorado and Altos de Chavón in the Dominican Republic before establishing his own studio and building his wood-burning kiln [confirm date]. He currently maintains a studio at Brushworks Arts & Industry in Florence, the former Pro-phy-lac-tic Brush Company building that is home to many local artists and creative businesses.

In addition to his studio practice, McCarthy teaches ceramics at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where the ceramics studio is part of the Activities Program. Working with students through self-directed, one-on-one, and group instruction, he helps maintain a studio environment where making is treated as an active, creative process. McCarthy is part of Hilltown 6, where visitors can see and purchase his work during the annual pottery tour. His work can also be found at PINCH in Northampton and through his website.

Location: Hadley, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Private studio; studio open by appointment and during scheduled events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail

ABOUT:

Donna McGee is a potter based in Hadley, Massachusetts, where she has worked from the same studio for decades. Her path to clay unfolded gradually. At Southern Illinois University, she designed her own major in art, sociology, and recreation, still unsure of what direction her life would take after college. Her first pottery class was difficult and discouraging, especially the challenge of learning to throw. Three years later, she took another class, and this time something began to shift. Clay slowly became the path she chose to follow.

McGee moved to Western Massachusetts with her husband after friends came to the region to start a cooperative studio with Leslie Ferrin and Mara Superior. The Hadley studio originally brought together a group of women potters from Boston, Northampton, and the Pioneer Valley, who rented an existing studio space, built a kiln, and began making pottery there. Over time, the original members moved on to establish their own studios, change careers, or make room for renters and apprentices. McGee has continued working from that studio ever since, building a practice rooted in continuity, patience, and the daily rhythms of a working pottery studio.

Alongside her pottery practice, McGee has spent the past decade working part-time with The Marks Project, an online research database documenting American ceramic artists and their marks from 1945 to the present. Rooted in both studio practice and ceramic research, McGee’s life in Western Massachusetts reflects the strength of a region where making, culture, and community continue to be recognized and celebrated. McGee is part of the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail. In 2026, she shares the studio with Mara Superior and hosts guest artists for the annual tour. Her work can be found through the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, online, by appointment at her studio, and at PINCH in Northampton.

Location: Montgomery, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Private studio; studio open by appointment and during scheduled events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour; Hilltown Open Studio Tour

Additional Notes: Founding member, Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

ABOUT:

Hiroshi Nakayama is a self-taught ceramic artist based in Worthington, Massachusetts, where he makes sculptural ceramic work from a private studio tucked deep into the woods. His practice includes dimensional forms and expressive slab-built pieces, made with high-fired stoneware, custom glazes, and oxidation firing. He is especially known for his Twilight Glow glaze, a light-responsive surface that shifts across deep blues, purples, blacks, golds, and greens, with each firing producing subtle variations.

Nakayama’s path to Western Massachusetts moved through several places before he settled here. From Japan, he traveled to Argentina, then to New York City, where he worked in a shared ceramics studio and fired often, using the opportunity to test glazes and deepen his understanding of clay and chemistry. He came to Western Massachusetts in 1990, looking for the space, resources, and independence needed to establish a dedicated ceramic studio. Worthington offered what an urban studio could not: room to build kilns, fire repeatedly, formulate custom glazes, and work through the long testing process required to develop a new glaze surface.

Surrounded by steep hills, dense woodlands, and a wildlife management area, Nakayama found the quietness and physical separation necessary for his work to develop on its own terms. Before arriving at his studio, he asks visitors to watch for turtles crossing the yard or laying eggs, a reminder that the studio exists within a shared landscape. A founding member and host artist of the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, Nakayama opens his studio to visitors during the annual tour. His work can also be found through his website. For Nakayama, solitude is not simply a backdrop to the work; it is part of the pace, form, and material language of the ceramics themselves.

Location: Project Art, Cummington, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Private studio; studio open by appointment & during scheduled events at Project Art

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Ferrin Contemporary; Project Art; Cummington Cultural District, Hilltown Arts Alliance 

Additional Notes: Resident artist at Project Art, Cummington, MA

ABOUT:

Kadri Pärnamets works in porcelain using traditional hand building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form. Her biomorphic, organic forms provide a means to convey her personal interests ranging from fragile, natural environments to female identity. Her surface treatments feature a range of gesture and expression with either abstract shape or narrative figure painting, inspired by painters from the European Renaissance and Impressionist eras, like Lucas Cranach the Elder and Edouard Manet.

Pärnamets’ work has been shown internationally at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (Tallinn, Estonia), at the International Tea Trade Expo (Shanghai, China), and many others. Since 1996, she has participated in symposiums in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland, USA, Norway, and Hungary.

Pärnamets graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia with a BA/MFA in Ceramics. Dividing her time between Estonia and USA, her primary studio is the USA at Project Art in Cummington, MA. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

Location: Stonepool Pottery, 42 Conwell Rd, Worthington, MA 01098

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio visit at Stonepool Pottery; studio open during scheduled events, demonstrations, and firings.

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, Hilltown Open Studio Tour

Additional Notes: Founding member, Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

ABOUT:

Mark Shapiro is a potter based at Stonepool Pottery in Worthington, Massachusetts, where he has lived and worked since 1986. After earning a BA in anthropology from Amherst College in 1978, Shapiro lived in New York City, made sculpture, and supported himself as a carpenter. Pottery offered him what sculpture had not: a way for art to enter the central spaces of people’s lives through touch, nourishment, use, and community.
Stonepool Pottery takes its name from a stone pool built on the property in 1893 by Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University. While restoring the historic farmhouse, Shapiro found a shard from a gray salt-glazed crock stamped “Hastings and Belding, Ashfield Mass.,” made only miles from his studio. The discovery deepened his interest in early New England pottery and in the relationship between makers, users, place, and local ceramic history.

From its early years, Stonepool Pottery has been a site of shared work, firing, mentorship, and exchange. Around 1988, Shapiro began working and firing with Sam Taylor and Michael Kline as they built and fired a wood kiln at his Worthington studio, learning alongside one another through making, firing, and conversation. In 1989, the three attended a workshop with Michael Simon at Penland School of Craft, an experience that helped shape their understanding of the expressive possibilities of domestic pottery. Shapiro later trained apprentices including Steve Théberge, Michael McCarthy, and Maya Machin.

Shapiro is known for wood-fired functional pottery rooted in strong forms, firing marks, and the domestic life of objects. He is a founding member of the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, where visitors can see and purchase his work during the annual tour. His work can also be found at PINCH in Northampton and by studio visit at Stonepool Pottery.

Location: Private studio. Work can be viewed by appointment at Ferrin Contemporary at Project Art, Cummington, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Private studio; studio only open by appointment

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Ferrin Contemporary; Project Art; Cummington Cultural District, Hilltown Arts Alliance 

Additional Notes: Founding member of Pinch Pottery, now PINCH, Northampton, MA

ABOUT:

Mara Superior is a visual artist based in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, whose work in porcelain brings together painting, sculpture, art history, and the decorative arts. Her ceramic platters, high-relief forms, and sculptural objects are known for their painterly surfaces and richly layered imagery, moving between domestic pleasure, personal narrative, political commentary, environmental concern, and references to history and culture.
Superior studied at Pratt Institute and Hartford Art School before completing a BFA in painting from the University of Connecticut and an MAT in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She came to porcelain with the eye of a painter and textile artist, approaching platters as canvases and using slab-built forms as smooth surfaces for image, ornament, and storytelling. As one of the original founders of East Street Clay Studio in Hadley, Superior helped establish the studio community that became the starting point of her long ceramic career in Western Massachusetts.

For Superior, porcelain carries both material beauty and historical memory. Her pieces are high-fired by James Guggina, continuing her long commitment to porcelain’s depth, luminosity, and risk. Her work treats porcelain as a place where personal memory, ornament, history, and contemporary life can gather. Represented by Ferrin Contemporary, Superior’s work can be seen by appointment at Ferrin Contemporary at Project Art and in permanent museum collections throughout the United States. She is a regular participant in programs and tours organized by the Cummington Cultural District and Hilltown Arts Alliance as a guest artist at Project Art, and she occasionally offers small works at PINCH in Northampton.

Location: High Hollow Pottery, 34 Shaw Rd, Windsor, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Private studio; studio only open during scheduled events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

Additional Notes: Member/Hilltown Open Studio artist at High Hollow Pottery

ABOUT:

Connie Talbot is a potter based at High Hollow Pottery in Windsor, Massachusetts, where she and Stephen welcome visitors to their 200-year-old home, a place shaped by pottery, poetry, gardening, community, and steady work. For Talbot, clay has long been tied to daily life, but in recent years her practice has centered on flameware cooking pots: vessels made to move directly between fire, food, table, and use.

Talbot describes clay cooking pots as poetic workhorses. Her casseroles, tagines, fry pans, and other cooking vessels are made from a specially formulated clay body that can withstand rapid changes in temperature. They can be used directly over gas or electric burners, in the oven, or on gas or charcoal grills. Each piece is tested with heat and cold before it is ready to use, carrying both practical strength and the pleasure of earth, weight, surface, and food.

Talbot began focusing on flameware later in her career, drawing from mid-century clay body experiments by potters including Bill Sax and Karen Karnes, and deepening her knowledge through a workshop with Robbie Lobell on Whidbey Island. Her pottery brings new energy to cooking by connecting the kitchen to the kiln and the handmade object to the rituals of nourishment. Talbot is a member of Hilltown 6, and visitors can see and purchase her work during the annual Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour at High Hollow Pottery.

Location: Dog Bar Pottery; 35 Perry Hill Road Ext. Westhampton, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open by appointment and during scheduled events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, Hilltown Open Studio Tour

Additional Notes: Founding member of the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

ABOUT:

Sam Taylor is a functional potter based in Westhampton, Massachusetts, where he makes wood-fired pots at Dog Bar Pottery. He first came to Western Massachusetts to help Mark Shapiro build a wood kiln, a temporary project that became the beginning of a long life in clay. After taking one ceramics course in college, Taylor’s path into pottery continued through mentorship, friendship, and hands-on learning. In 1989, he studied with Michael Simon at Penland, an experience he described as four years of ceramics education compressed into five weeks. Mark Shapiro and Michael Kline were also important influences in his development as a potter.

Before moving to Western Massachusetts, Taylor lived and made pottery in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Dog Bar Pottery takes its name from the Dog Bar Breakwater there, a granite structure extending into the Atlantic that protects Gloucester Harbor. Taylor bought his Westhampton property in 1996 and continues to live and work there today, between the Connecticut River Valley and the hills of the Berkshires, near the North Branch of the Manhan River. His studio and kiln are part of the same property where he raised his three children, surrounded by gardens, flowers, butterflies, and a small wooden cabin gallery where his work is displayed. His wife, Carol Lollis, is the longtime photo editor of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Taylor fires his wood kiln four times a year, and the firings often become community gatherings, bringing potters, neighbors, and visitors together around the kiln and the potluck table. He is part of the founding group of Hilltown 6 and continues to be a host artist on the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour. His studio is open to visitors by appointment, and his work can be seen in the gallery on his property. His pots are occasionally available through Anthony Schaller’s gallery. His story reflects the way a single kiln project, sustained friendships, and a deep commitment to wood firing became a rooted studio life in Western Massachusetts.

Location: Northampton, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open during the annual Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail

Additional Notes: Former Studio Potter board member

ABOUT:

Steve Théberge is a potter based in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he makes stoneware vessels intended for daily service on the table, shelf, or altar. Working primarily with slips and glazes on functional forms, Théberge is interested in the way process, attention, and state of mind become visible in the finished object. His pots are grounded in function and tradition while remaining rooted in the present moment.

Théberge’s path into clay began when he left high school to apprentice with Mark Shapiro at Stonepool Pottery from 1998 to 2000, choosing direct studio learning as his way into the field. He later earned a degree in anthropology and spent years as an activist in New York City before training in Zen Buddhist monasteries in the United States and Japan from 2008 to 2013. These experiences continue to inform his practice, especially his current focus on ceremonial vessels for religious ritual and individual spiritual practice.

Théberge has exhibited nationally, including at the Smithsonian Craft Show and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show. He has also been a short-term resident at Red Lodge Clay Center and an artist-in-residence at STARworks Ceramics in North Carolina. He is a host artist on the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail and a former board member of Studio Potter. Visitors can see and purchase his work during the annual pottery trail, through selected exhibitions and shows, at Pulp Gallery, at Sticks & Bricks in Northampton, and through his Northampton studio.

Location: Northfield, MA

Open Hours/Schedule: Studio open during community events

Affiliation/Participating Tours: Guest artist at Project Art, Cummington, MA; Guest with Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail and the Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour

ABOUT:

Tom White is a potter based in Northfield, Massachusetts, where he has built a long life around functional pottery. He first encountered clay around 1971 while studying biology at Monmouth University in New Jersey, when he took a pottery class as an elective and found himself drawn to the material. After being drafted for military service, where he worked as a medic, White returned and committed himself to pottery. He later studied at Otis College of Art and Design and has now been making pots for more than five decades.

White moved to Northfield after years of making and showing work, drawn by the support for handmade pottery he found in New England. On his property, he built a working studio with multiple kilns and a gallery/showroom, creating the infrastructure for a practice rooted in firing, repetition, and daily use. His pottery includes bowls, mugs, plates, serving pieces, casseroles, planters, teapots, and other objects made to be used in the home.

White’s work is rooted in function, with surfaces that often suggest abstract landscapes, atmosphere, and the movement of the natural world. He uses a range of firing methods, including wood, gas, and salt/soda firing, allowing variation in color, texture, and glaze to become part of each finished piece. His pottery can be purchased through craft shows, including the annual League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Fair, as well as through commissions, craft galleries, and his Northfield studio/gallery. Though no longer a regular member of the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail, White occasionally appears as a guest artist with both Asparagus Valley and Hilltown 6.