Tom Turner - Potter

Artist Biography

Tom Turner received his undergraduate degree in Art from Illinois State University in 1968. He taught crafts while in the Army and then was asked to establish a ceramic art program for the College of Architecture at Clemson University. He did so in 1971 and taught there until 1976 when he resigned to work full time in his own studio. He received his M.F.A at Clemson in 1973, established himself in Florida in 1979, moved to Medina, Ohio in 1982, moved to Delaware, Ohio in 1986 and moved to Mars Hill, North Carolina in 2005. He has worked with high fired porcelain for over 35 years. Turner has taught at the leading craft schools in the country, including Penland, Arrowmont and the Archie Bray Foundation. In addition he has conducted workshops in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Washington D.C., Oregon, California, Colorado, Texas, New Jersey and Michigan (over 125 in all). He has been visiting artist at Illinois State University and The Ohio State University.

Major shows in which Turner has been invited to exhibit include Young Americans 1969, which toured the U.S.; the Marietta Crafts National in 1974, 1977 and 1981; the 33rd Scripps College Invitational; Functional Ceramics at Wooster, Ohio 1978, 1981 and 1983; Thirty-five Artists of The Southeast (which toured for two years); New Directions: Fiber and Clay (which toured for three years); Twenty American Potters (which toured the world and became part of the collections at various American Embassies); The Emergence of a New Tradition: American Porcelain, at The Hand and Spirit Gallery; and American Porcelain: New Expressions in an Ancient Art, shown at the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (which then toured the United States and the world). Turner’s Covered Jar in the exhibition is part of the National Collection of Fine Arts. He has also exhibited in over 150 invitational and over 50 juried shows.

Tom Turner’s work has appeared in Craft Horizons, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter, The Washingtonian, House Beautiful, Southern Living, Ceramica – Madrid, Spain, Ceramic Review – London, England.

Turner has received Individual Artist Grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Ohio Arts Council, and a Craftsmen’s Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including United States Embassies in the Near East, Far East, Latin American and Africa; Arizona State University; Illinois State University; Clemson University; Utah Museum of Fine Art; Utah State University; Marietta College; S.C. Arts Commission; The Mint Museum of Art; The Columbia Museum of Art; The Greenville County Museum of Art; Spring Mills Art Collection; East Carolina University; Foothills Community College in San Francisco; National Collection of Fine Arts; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; Longwood College, Virginia; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, N.Y.; The Zanesville Art Center, Ohio; The Canton Art Institute, Ohio; The University of Oregon; McLean County Art Center, Illinois; Ceramics Monthly Collection, Ohio and Baylor University, Texas.

Work Available For Sale


Tom Turner 01
Tom Turner 02
Tom Turner 03
Tom Turner 04
Tom Turner 01

$305.00
Tom Turner 02

$235.00
Tom Turner 03

Tom Turner 04

$160.00
Tom Turner 05
Tom Turner 06
Tom Turner 07
Tom Turner 05

Tom Turner 06

Tom Turner 07



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