Hannah Palma Laky, a graduate of the Cook County High School class of 2005 and daughter of Mark and Laura Laky of Grand Marais, has been accepted as a resident artist at Clay Space, a nonprofit clay arts studio in Warrenville, Illinois.
Clay Space is home to a community of resident artists and offers ceramics classes and workshops by nationally and internationally recognized visiting artists. Clay Space has a gallery and hosts shows highlighting the work of its resident artists and selected students.
Resident artists pay $100 a month to use Clay Space facilities to create their artwork. Laky plans to teach classes there and is hoping she can start making money from the sale of her pottery. She is currently working as a bilingual Spanish circulation clerk at the Addison Public Library and as a server at Honey Café in Glen Ellyn.
In September, Laky had a photography exhibit at the Addison Public Library Art Gallery where she was the artist of the month. She was also invited to display her pottery there, where it remains on display.
“It would be such a gift to be able to make money doing something that I absolutely love,” she said. “When I make pottery I am filled with happiness. My goal is to continue to grow in knowledge and skill in the art of ceramics and keep moving forward in hopes of making a semi-living doing something I feel I am meant to do.”
Laky graduated from Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota with a bachelor of arts in studio arts and art history with an emphasis in Japanese woodblock printmaking and soda-fired pottery. “At Clay Space they have a soda kiln and I plan to use it a lot!” she said. In soda kilns, potters introduce soda to create a glaze.
“Riding the line between functional and non-functional pottery has been my goal since the beginning of my pottery making career,” Laky says in her artist statement. “In the last couple of years, I have been very interested in the idea of creating sacred objects (e.g., urns, prayer boxes) and how they interact within people’s lives. What makes an object look sacred? What is the use of the sacred object? I am still using these same ideas but transporting them into objects that are used in daily life, such as bowls and cups.” Laky says she is exploring “how the sacred and mundane interact.
“…Currently, to get the aesthetic I want, I am using stoneware clay and mixing ball clay slips with glazes and letting the soda kiln do what it wants.”
Stoneware clay is very fine and especially heat resistant. Ball clay is very fine and highly malleable. Slip is a mixture of clay and water.
Laky and her husband, Carlos Palma Baltodano, live in Carol Stream, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
Hannah Palma Laky in the process of creating pottery. Laky, a graduate of Cook County High School, has been accepted as a resident artist at Clay Space, a clay arts studio in Warrenville, Illinois. She plans to teach classes at Clay Space and has her pottery on display at the Addison Public Library Art Gallery. She and her husband, Carlos Palma Baltodano, live in Carol Stream, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
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