Ronnie Gould

"I love the conversation between my hands and the clay as one of my animal sculptures seemingly comes to life with its own personality."

Ceramic sculptor Ronnie Gould has always been passionate about animals. Clay is her medium of choice to express the gestures and personalities that make each animal so special. Her strong association with dogs since childhood makes them one of her favorite subjects. Additionally, Gould's concern for wildlife is at the core of her endangered species sculptures.

Gould creates her animals in stoneware using a variety of hand-building techniques. She fires her work using the exciting raku process, in which the work goes directly from a hot kiln into metal cans of sawdust and newspaper. This process creates a variety of fascinating results as the carbon enters the crackles and the lack of air matures the glazes. Just as each animal has its own personality, every firing will render a variety of surface finishes.

Gould has been working in ceramics for over thirty years. She received her BA in art education with a focus in painting from Westfield State College in Massachusetts. Later, after she found clay as her medium, she studied ceramics at Massachusetts College of Art and at the DeCordova Museum with Makoto Yabe.