Welcome and thanks for stopping by! Please look around, and contact us if you have any questions. Thanks!

Erin and Jason

photo by Renata Parker, TALK magazine

Recent news

• We are pleased to announce we have completed Convergence, the first commissioned sculpture for the permanent collection at First Presbyterian Church of Greenville, SC.

• We were invited to exhibit our work at The Grand Bohemian Gallery in Greenville, SC

• We were interviewed by Clemson World Magazine for their Alumni Profiles. Check it out here: bit.ly/ErinJasonHall

• We were honored to jury into and exhibit at Artisphere 2022 in Greenville, SC, which consistently ranks in the top 10 best juried art festivals in the nation by Art Fair Sourcebook.

• We were guests on The Potter's Cast, where we were interviewed about our work. Here's the link if you'd like to check it out: Logos, Branding & Business, Erin and Jason Hall, Episode 397, The Potters Cast

• We were included in the Jan. 2018 issue of TALK magazine in a feature story about pottery. We were interviewed about our work and some of our future plans. Check it out on pages 57-59 at http://greenvilletalk.sc.newsmemory.com

• We exhibited at one of the nation's top juried art festivals, Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver, CO, July 1-3, 2017. We were also been juried into the exclusive Opening Gala and Artist's Preview Event on the evening of June 30.

• We were interviewed about our work on Channel 7 Daybreak News for Artisphere 2017! Check it out: http://wspa.com/2017/05/11/artisphere-to-feature-135-artists-music-and-food/

• We were honored to have received the Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd Mayor's Choice Award at the Artisphere, Arts, Culture, Life festival in Greenville in May 2015

• We were featured as Emerging Artists in the November, 2015 issue of Greenville's TALK magazine. Link here: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/life/style/talk-greenville/2015/10/30/art-watch-emerging-artists/74896990/

About Us

Alberta Pottery is the studio of Erin and Jason Hall. Full-time ceramic artists, we specialize in studio pottery and sculptural ceramics. We are represented by several local and regional galleries, exhibit at national juried art festivals, and show our work seasonally at pop-ups at Garner's Natural Life in Greenville. We work primarily in stoneware and fire in a high temperature reduction kiln to cone 10. Our work is collected internationally.

Process

We use both wheel-throwing and hand building techniques in our studio. Each piece is created with utmost attention to detail and craftsmanship. We use a locally-sourced stoneware claybody, which contains three different types of grog (pulverized fired clay) that gives it strength and texture. Our claybody, made up of many types of clays and other materials giving various desired properties, also contains a small amount of iron. This gives our glazes a speckled look because of the iron burning through the glaze. Once complete to the greenware stage, the work is bisque-fired in an electric kiln and glazed. We mix our own glazes from dry ingredients using time-honored recipes, such as Shinos and Celadons, that we have adjusted to our claybody and firing process. The large gas reduction kiln in which we glaze fire holds about 150 pieces at a time, as is fired for 8-15 hours to 2,375 degrees F to full vitrification. Our functional work is non-toxic, food, microwave and dishwasher safe, though hand-washing is recommended.

Artists' Statement

Each handmade ceramic piece begins on the wheel, and is then altered, carved or faceted when leather-hard, glazed and often dusted with wood ash, then fired in a high temperature gas reduction kiln. While similar in process, each piece is unique in form and surface. The work is process-oriented and ever-evolving, reflecting the vastness of possibility with clay.  Creating forms which capture the softness of wet clay, but which also speak of volume and contained space, the hand and the mark of the tool, are all essential parts of the work. Another important aspect is surface; the character of the glazes, especially in combination with wood ash, and their behavior over different textured surfaces, are all continually informative to the process and resulting forms. They evoke the natural world, particularly landscapes and sky over which fluid dynamics have shaped sand or cloud, in much the same way glaze and ash become molten liquid and melt over form in the presence of flame.

Our story

We came to clay separately through our academic training. Jason’s background is in structural steel engineering, which he learned in his family’s business. However, from an early age, he was always making objects with his hands, and his family encouraged him in this direction. He began making handmade pots and sculpture during his high school years at the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, a specialized school for the arts. He also attended the SC Governor’s School for the Arts summer program. He then continued his studies at Clemson University where he studied architecture, engineering and fine art, graduating with his BFA degree with a concentration in ceramics in 2001.  In addition to ceramics, Jason is also an accomplished painter and sculptor.

Erin grew up in a very creative family of artists, writers and educators, and was encouraged to pursue her passion for the arts.  Erin’s mom, also an artist, took pottery classes while she was pregnant, and there’s a story that Erin told her mom she wanted a potter's wheel when she was 3! Through her high school years, she studied theatre, also at the Fine Arts Center and SC Governor’s School for the Arts, and she attended Stetson University in Florida for her undergraduate work.  It was at Stetson that she took her first ceramics class, instantly fell in love with clay, and ended up double-majoring in theatre and art, graduating with BA degrees in each. She attended Clemson University for her MFA, where she concentrated on sculptural and installation-oriented ceramics, graduating in 2003.  

We met in the clay studio at Clemson, with studios next to each other, but didn't really get to know each other there. We went our separate ways after graduation and both worked in clay semi-professionally for about 10 years each, while also working other jobs. During that time, we ended up in studios next to each other again, in Greenville's Village Arts District. We maintained a cooperative studio, Gallery 1279, for about 5 years. Married in 2012, we moved our studio home, and continued working in clay, while Erin taught ceramics and art history at several local universities, and Jason worked part-time in his family's engineering business. We also had the opportunity to spend approximately five months at sea teaching pottery for Princess Cruises! When the pottery sales became more profitable than our other jobs combined, we decided to take the joyful leap to become full-time ceramic artists and start Alberta Pottery, LLC in the summer of 2014. We absolutely love what we do, and are so thankful that we are able to do it full-time!  We hope our work is a reflection and communication of this love.