"Template Press Pitcher" by Gina Freuen

Porcelain, stains, shinos, soda. 9" x 13" x 3", 2.5 lbs. 2021. Porcelain, slab built with rolled in texture, soda fired.

Gina Freuen has been a professionally working artist and educator in Spokane, Washington for over 45 years. In 2005, Gina Freuen was awarded the City of Spokane’s “Arts Award for Individual Artist.” In 2017, she was named one of the YWCA of Spokane’s “Women of Distinction” in the Arts.

Her ceramic works has been awarded the Carol Duke Award of Excellence at the Bellevue Art Museum’s “ArtsFair” and Best of Show at the Sun Valley Arts & Crafts Festival. She was a 1996 Washington State Artist Trust “Gap Grant” recipient. Her work has been published and exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest including a recent publication, “100 Northwest Artists” Schiffer Publishing, Author: E. Ashley Rooney. Since 1996, Gina Freuen has been on the teaching faculty of the art department at Gonzaga University (retired Spring 2017) and in the fall of 2013 joined the Trackside Studio Ceramic Art Gallery, Spokane, as an exhibiting partner in its monthly exhibits.

Gina’s ceramic works partner hand building, wheel throwing, drawing and the whim of an atmospheric firings. She takes her work annually to large anagama wood firings. Her home studio has a soda / wood kiln fired with gas, stoking wood and introducing a soda ash blend into the 2300-degree environment, then reduction cooling. The home kiln process takes about 60 hours from beginning of load to shutting down. All ceramic works from both processes are one-of-kind, the result of complex interactions between smoke, flame, carbon reduction, type of clay and the ceramic form itself.

See more of the artist’s work at http://www.ginafreuen.com.