My pottery is inspired by the concept of the collective unconscious -the idea that we are interdependent beings who, over millennia, have developed a shared language of symbols, forms, patterns and designs that tell stories and echo nature. I look to traditions and techniques - from the handbuilt coils and surface patterns of traditional East African pottery to the forms and motifs in ancient Minoan and Greek pottery- to help share my story through clay. I work intuitively, creating from a place where I feel like I’m tapping into something bigger and more expansive. I’m interested in placing ideas in relation to one another, whether through the lens of myths and stories or the fractal patterns found in nature. I want people to hold my pots and feel a sense of interconnectedness - with the ancestors, with nature and with me.

Kelly Nicholson (b. 1977 Mansfield, Ohio) is a visual artist, ceramicist, and art educator who lives and works in Swarthmore PA, just outside of Philadelphia.