About me
MESlayden Art
My story
My process
Hi! I’m Marty. For forty years I taught Spanish and French, but now I spend my time sculpting whimsical figures out of clay. Making things with my hands has brought me joy ever since I was a small child, so it makes me very happy now to do it full time.
I enjoy working in various mediums – sewing, needle felting, and encaustic painting, among others. But currently my main pursuit is pottery.
I began playing with clay as a teenager and returned to it as a student at Bemis School of Art in Colorado Springs in 2009. When the school closed temporarily during COVID, my pottery practice moved to my garage where I now have (thanks to the help of my husband and son) my own ceramic studio. Working alone, without teachers to guide me, opened my creativity to new and exciting innovations.
My work for the last five years has turned primarily towards figures, often goofy and sometimes downright crazy! Bright colors and quirky subjects are hallmarks of my style.
I like to use underglaze colors, as well as terra sigillata (sometimes tinted with Mason stains) to decorate the pieces at the greenware stage, along with some sgraffito and mishima inlay. After the bisque stage, I continue the surface decoration process with commercial glazes, painted on various sections of the piece. Often, I will leave the raw clay exposed on some parts.
Generally I prefer to work with earthenware clay - either red or white clay, fired to cone 05. But sometimes I venture to the stoneware realm and fire to cone 5. Each figure description tells the type of clay and firing temperature of that piece.
I rarely accept commissions, but sometimes I will say yes. If you are interested in my work, please follow my social media accounts or contact me via e-mail. Thank you for stopping by!
My philosophy
The Haves and The Have Nots.
Economic disparity has always existed, but it seems to have gotten a lot worse in recent years. Some people have so much more than they need, while others can't even afford a place to live.
While I am fortunate to have enough money to maintain my comfortable life, I want to help solve this problem.
Pottery is my hobby. I do it for fun. I would spend my time and money on my pottery even if no one ever bought anything that I made. So, why not put the time and money spent on my hobby to good use? Maybe it will help the world, even just a little bit.
That is why I donate the money from my pottery sales to Westside Cares, a fabulous resource to help people in my community.
Westside Cares | Colorado Springs – Providing care and compassion for our neighbors in need
Over the past four years, my pottery sales have generated over $10,000 in donations.