Birds and Bees, and all the Critters of Spring: Come spend some time making a tile with local artist Parran Collery. Using simple traditional techniques we will create a relief sculpted tile, adding details and color. Tiles will be fired off-site and available for pick-up at a later date. Please feel free to bring an image you are interested in working from (size 6-8") but not required, inspirational materials will be available. Please dress in studio clothes.

Parran Collery - Eartha Handmade Tile

Parran Collery is a ceramic artist working with relief sculpted clay and tiles. Parran founded her studio in Southern Maryland in 1997, an area that still has working farms, woods and forests, both the Patuxent River and the Chesapeake Bay as places to explore. Her inspiration derives from observations of the natural world, its bits and  pieces, geometry and flow, natural and organic patterns. She is curiously interested in the everyday aspects of nature: birds and bugs, leaves and flowers, rural vistas. These become the starting points for her designs, inflected by art history, graphic design, and color play. 

Parran received a BA from the University of Vermont and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She began a sculpture career that included  exhibitions in many galleries and museums throughout the 1990’s, and taught as an  adjunct instructor at Toms River Community College in NJ. After an apprenticeship an  art studio in the historically tile-rich area of Bucks County PA, her focus shifted to relief sculpted tiles and mosaics, and she moved back to her hometown to launch Eartha Handmade Tile, a ceramic production studio. Her tiles and mosaic designs have been exhibited extensively and are included in many homes. She has also been a popular  visiting artist-in-residence, working with young students at more than a dozen schools in Maryland and Virginia to create permanent tile installations. 

Parran’s focus over the past several years has turned to public projects, working with communities to create enlivening works of art. These include wall mosaics, sculptures, and art benches, for both interior and outdoors environments. Partnering with multiple  stakeholders and often including local community members in the art making process, Parran brings her love of nature to the forefront of these projects, creating compelling  designs that invite the viewer to slow down and contemplate her art, and by extension their own backyards, making our sense of the everyday more precious and profound. Embracing the wisdom of environmentalist Rachel Carson: “Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of everything you see.”