Stacy Morgan, a South Carolina native, has explored art from graphic design to oil painting to pottery. Learn more about her process and her current Tiny Gallery show below.
Morgan grew up in Charleston, and the city’s Lowcountry elements have continued to appear in her work over time. Art itself has been a key form of expression for Morgan, one she herself has returned to again and again.
Morgan studied graphic design at the University of Georgia before actively working as a graphic designer overseas in Germany. Though this connection to art was valuable, after moving back to America – specifically moving to Lexington, SC – Morgan decided to dive deeper into her relationship with art.
In Columbia, she studied oil with Dale Maestro at the Columbia Museum of Art. This relationship led to her selling her digitizing business and opening Lexington’s Paint & Pour at the Old Mill. Then, as the story goes for so many of us, COVID hit. Having to temporarily close her business, Morgan began painting pet portraits and experimenting on pottery in her personal studio.
Post-COVID, Morgan left Paint & Por behind to open her current personal business: Pottery for Daze. Since opening this, she has been selling her pottery at a plethora of venues. She used to sell at Soda City but now focuses on festivals and markets so that she can dedicate more time to building sufficient inventory.
Most of Morgan’s work is “embellished with images of Southeastern flora and fauna,” identifying markers of places that have been so dear to her for so long. She uses underglazes to paint on most of her pieces, where “the black and white botanical silhouette pieces reflect [her] graphics background, while the full color illustrated pieces celebrate [her] love of painting organic and natural elements.”
It is a detailed, multi-step process that Morgan follows. After throwing the form on the wheel, she waits two days for the pieces to firm up slightly under plastic sheeting. Once they are “leather hard,” she paints silhouettes with several coats of black underglaze before carving clean edges and details into the underglaze and clay—a technique called sgrafitto.
“Some of the stoneware clay being used fires a creamy white, while others produce earthy speckles, enhancing an organic look to the pieces,” Morgan details, “With clays named Iceman, Dark Star, and White Bear, it is intriguing to see how each reacts to a cone five firing. After the pieces are bisque fired, I lightly sand them down and glaze them with a clear glaze before their final firing.”
For Tiny Gallery, Morgan selected pieces thrown on the wheel with cream colored stoneware clay, enhanced with “graphic black silhouettes of botanical elements.” She asserted that she “wanted the gallery to feature silhouettes of nature to allow the user to experience these shapes and forms without their natural coloring.”
As with all her work, each piece featured in Tiny Gallery is functional for daily use, “making everyday life a bit more beautiful.”
View Morgan’s pottery show 24/7 during the month of October via Jasper’s online gallery space, and see what she does next by following her on Instagram @pottery_for_daze