Title
Round
Stoneware, woodfired in Marshall, NC with Josh Copus and company
12 x 13 x 13 inches
Courtesy of the artist
Estimated Retail Value: $5,000
Starting Bid: $2,500
Artist Billy Ritter creates functional and conceptual ceramics that explore spirituality, create community, and share personal and universal stories. Ritter focuses strongly on atmospheric firing–hardening ceramics in a wood-fired, brick kiln–an intrinsically collaborative process with nature. He also integrates drawing and hand-built sculpture into his works, connecting to his teacher, celebrated ceramist Kirk Mangus about whom moCa did a posthumous 2014 retrospective.
After Ritter built this vessel, he deliberately placed Moon Jar on its side in the “kiln chamber,” the hottest part of the kiln that reaches a white-hot state (2400 degrees+). This intensely reactive zone near the firebrick entrance creates nearly intolerable conditions for most vessels. But rather than breaking into pieces, Moon Jar opened up to let energy out (or in). Eschewing a Western obsession with perfection, Ritter aligns Moon Jar’s physical shift with an Eastern ethos that embraces the value of deviation. Further, Ritter applied no glaze to this vessel. Instead, Moon Jar’s surface marks the vessel’s intense journey through the fire, and the important changes it created. As such, Moon Jar is an apt metaphor for moCa’s benefit and the transformations it celebrates.
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Billy Ritter
Billy Ritter (b. Ellwood City, PA; lives and works in Cleveland) earned his BFA from Slippery Rock University, his MFA from Kent State University, and also studied at The Academy of Fine Art and Design (VŠVU Výročie) in Bratislava, Slovakia. His limited editioned vessels, installations, and functional heirloom pottery are loved and used by chefs, restaurateurs, architects, designers, photo studios, and collectors nationally and internationally. He has served as an adjunct professor for Tri-C and taught ceramics classes and workshops throughout the region for over a decade. Ritter exhibits and sells his work at his studio shop in Cleveland’s Hildebrandt Building and at fairs and markets throughout the area. He is represented by Cohab Space in North Carolina.
