Who We Are
FOUNDER
JP Clay is owned by Roslindale/Boston resident and artist Gena Mavuli. She’s most at home with her hands in clay or stoking a kiln fire deep into the night. Her ceramics practice, and her life practice, is all about experience and experimentation which is evident in the range of her work. She holds this space and it’s Roslindale sister studio, Create, for the community to explore with freedom and joy, with an eye on the experience more than results. You can read more and see her work here.
STUDIO MANAGER
Vanessa Norris (she/her) grew up in rural Maine but has called Boston home for the last 10+ years. She graduated with a BFA in Ceramics from MassArt in 2016 and moved across the country to work for potters in Park City, UT and Seattle, WA before settling back in Boston where her love for clay began. She makes colorful cloud & rainbow pottery, marrying pastel colors with voluminous wheel-thrown forms that look like they might’ve dropped from a cartoon sky. When she's not hunched over in her studio decorating a mug, you can usually find her cuddling her cats or biking along the Charles River on her lavender cruiser. She’s a lover of handmade objects, tattoos, the color purple, cats, and all things clay. You can follow her work here.
INSTRUCTOR
Kristin Powers (she/her) is a sculptural installation artist focused on creating spaces while leaving room. for reflection. Working with multiple mediums, lens-based media, and sound, Powers explores an ever-evolving iterative landscape, looking for resonant frequencies where many feel.
Powers holds a BFA in Ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has attended residencies at MERZ – Scotland, Vermont Studio Center, Haystack, and Penland. Powers’ recent curatorial projects include The Art of Lobbying, Raising the Gavel, Elemental, What Do We Have To Say?, and The Art of Storytelling. Her work has recently been shown at MassArt x SoWa in Boston, First Street Gallery in NYC, The Black Box Gallery in Oregon, and SAGE Gallery in Wyoming. You can find her work here.
INSTRUCTOR
Angela Caldarone specializes in teaching early-stage potters with a skill for launching students into their own practice. Angela holds a BA in Ceramics and her own work focuses on skilled craftsmanship and imagery. She has been with us at our sister studio, Create, since 2022 and now joins us at JP Clay! You can follow her work here.
INSTRUCTOR
Amy Gillian Wilson is a ceramicist, interdisciplinary artist and educator. She has been practicing ceramics for over ten years and specializes in hand-building sculptural forms. In her practice, she integrates several disciplines spanning ceramics, wood-working, paper mache, and fiber arts to construct large-scale sculptures and installations. She sees clay as a very valuable opponent and teacher, as it constantly demands our flexibility, investigation, and inventiveness. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Additionally, Amy has worked as a visual arts instructor for several K-12 public schools and possesses a deep love for helping students express themselves through the arts.
INSTRUCTOR
Sammy Sass fell in love with clay 25 years ago and has been making pottery ever since. She’s taught ceramics to adults, teens, and kids, and enjoys supporting people to learn the material and build confidence in clay. She believes in using our hands to connect with the restorative power of creativity.
INSTRUCTOR
Emma Green is an arts educator and multi-disciplinary maker who has been working in ceramics studios since 2015. She earned her BA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2019. Her practice spans ceramics, installation, printmaking, writing, and archival research to explore history, memory, and storytelling. She gained many of her ceramics skills as a studio manager at Yale's Trumbull Pottery Studio, and previously taught ceramics at the Community Folk Art Center in Syracuse, NY and Brookline Arts Center in Brookline, MA. As an educator she has also spent time teaching incarcerated youth and running visual arts programming for teens in the Greater Boston Area.
INSTRUCTOR
Zachary Stuart has been involved in arts education in the Boston area for the past 25 years. With a specialty in Ceramics, Photography/Film and Theatre, he’s excited to be back in JP where he trained in production pottery, and looking forward to teaching youth, teens, adults and anyone who want to get their creative juices flowing with pottery.