Artist Profile: Marion McChesney

The hands never stop moving while she’s talking. She’s defining space, drawing shapes, painting imaginary pots. It’s kinetic energy. Not frenetic. It’s the energy of passion and imagination. The energy of ceramic artist Marion McChesney, better known as “The Pawlet Potter”.

After being a part of the ‘hometown’ picture of ‘downtown’ Pawlet for over 20 years, Marion and Lee, her Real Estate husband, have moved ‘to the boonies’. Down the Danby Pawlet Road, up a dirt road, around a bend, up a hill, through the woods, following the STUDIO signs to her new studio, it is a ride worth taking. The new studio is another work of Marion’s artistic vision. She is as excited talking about her new space as she is about her work. This is a measure of the creative energy she puts into whatever she does. She needed to find a builder that would work with her vision, her passion for using recycled materials, bargain finds, sidewalk sale treasures, odd lot windows, nostalgia in the form of the old counters from the Station Restaurant, columns from the house that burned down next to Lee’s office, dumpster doors. Peter Van Veck obviously ‘got’ Marion’s vision and the result is a dynamic, light, airy open space... with her odd lot windows reaching high on the ‘showroom’ side of the space, to the functional open work area. The display area is bathed in light and shows off her work beautifully. Marion’s secondary business of designing spaces has enabled her to design 4 barns for other clients, and her expertise shows in the design features of her new space. A huge old barn beam she salvaged from some other project acts as display shelf and the design feature of a recessed balcony alcove bringing the design elements of the outside inside is a unique signature design element.

But her pottery is her real passion and what wakes her up in the middle of the night with ideas and forms and glazes firing her imagination. She creates not only functional pieces, bowls, dishes, vases....but also pure sculptural forms. Her work is beautiful. Organic. ‘Feminine’. Soft and sculptural as well as strong and graphic. Her palette reflect the colors of Nature but are not necessarily earth colors. Soft blues and greens, white and off white in the delicate porcelain pieces, and her favorite glaze, black. She uses nature’s own graphics. Pressing leaves, plants, shells into the clay, to create texture and movement and interest. The natural ‘thing’ that eventually got her national notice was her experimenting with ‘roadkill’. Frogs, bats, insects have all found their way as design element. She became known as the Roadkill Lady and was flown to Hollywood to talk about her work on the Wayne Brady Show. That was in .........and she still makes an occasional piece when she finds the right ‘subject’. She delights in naming every piece...Fred and Ginger, Marathon Frog, Leaping Lizards, Frog doing the Hula.... But make no mistake....these are not just pure whimsy...each piece is formed, pressed, glazed, designed to perfection....and people collect them.

The national notice of her Roadkill Pottery is not her only claim to fame. Marion humbly says “good things happen to me”. Like when the Editor of House Beautiful walked into her Studio in Pawlet while on vacation, fell in love with her work and featured her 6 times in the magazine. Or when she was chosen for the John Hancock Calendar of Artists from all over the country and as the September artist had her delicate porcelain pieces grouped and impeccably photographed in front of a stone wall. Or when someone from Country Living saw her stoneware, wrote a piece on the work and opened a door for her to go into ‘production’. But Marion is a one’of-a-kind- artist and decided she had no desire to do piece after piece of the same thing. As she says, “The artist overrode the business woman”. “Maybe a bad decision” but definitely her vision of what is important to her creative life. She loves work that is “mentally challenging”, work that excites her. “You wait for what’s next. It’s about waiting and being open.” And she loves to experiment. She’ll start a piece on the wheel and end up turning it upside down and pulling and bending the form until something happens. Her Sculptural pieces are hand built using slabs like a coil. She ‘starts with an idea and “let’s the clay take over.” Sometimes it goes in directions she doesn’t have a clue where she’s going. She says “it’s like getting on a scooter... (she demonstrates on an imaginary scooter)...and when it gets going you put both feet on and your taken away.”

She’s tried other media but she “has to feel it, work it.” She’s got to have her hands in it. She’s about tactile. She’s got to feel the shape, the texture, the form, the movement of the clay and what is in the clay. Marion is a self taught artist. Her technique and technical skills have been shaped and learned from the many workshops and seminars she has taken over the years, many from Frog Hollow ‘in the old days up in Middlebury”. Porcelain hand building, sawdust firing, throwing techniques, pit firing, raku, glazing, creating large sculpture are some of the many workshops she has taken, but the artistic vision, the ideas, the passion is all her own, things that can’t be taught but that connect with the creative spirit...and that spirit defines her. It’s what wakes her in the middle of the night. The vision of the next piece. The form, color, glaze, a feeling. She says with the new space she feels like she has ‘graduated’ as an artist.