Juror Profile: Lucy Clark

Lucy Clark, the juror for the upcoming Anderson Artists Guild Membership Show, owns an art gallery in Brevard, N.C. She is also a potter and mixed media artist and a member of The Piedmont Craftsmen Guild in Winston-Salem, N.C.

She spent 29 years as a licensed massage therapist but was always an artist. She is self-taught; college was not the route for her. “I was an abstract and tactile thinker and doer,” she said. “College crushed my spirit. I practiced on my own through trial and error. I didn’t want anyone to mess my vision. I did not want to replicate; I wanted to authenticate.”

The first time she touched clay was about 17 years ago. “That’s when I found the medium I could speak through,” she said. A transformative experience was studying with a potter at New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch for a month. This cross-cultural immersion program set in an eroding landscape energized and focused her artwork, which uses the hand-built Pueblo method. “I use one coil at a time and just four or five tools, along with burnishing the stones to create a sheen,” she said. “I use a low fire and smoke them in sawdust to get a rich black finish.”

After being a member of a co-op and selling her work at art shows, Clark opened her own space with another artist several years ago, then moved to a Main Street location and took over on her own. Then COVID struck. “I decided I was all in or done; I chose all in,” she said. She secured an emergency grant to develop an e-commerce website and sold from there until she could reopen her gallery.

Today she has expanded the space to 3000 square feet and represents 40 artists. The gallery offers workshops, and she also promotes it through emails and podcasts. The type of artwork she sells has a softness to it. “I look for the beauty, not political statements or dogma,” she said.

As a juror, she looks for authenticity and expertise and innovation. “As an artist, if you haven’t found your own voice, that’s the next level of evolution,” she said.

For more information about Clark, visit https://lucyclarkgallery.com/.