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1947Born Pittsburg, Texas
EDUCATION
1970 BA North Texas State University, Denton, Texas
1976 MA Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas
PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE
1976—Studio Potter
BIOGRAPHY
Michael Haley and Suzy Siegele have been working together since they met in the 1970s. They produce a large line of dinnerware using colored porcelain. They mix numerous oxides into the clay body creating the thirty or so shades of porcelain used in their work. Various colored clays are stacked, sliced, extruded, or otherwise manipulated and constructed into loaves which are then sliced, like bread, into thin slabs from which their dinnerware is made.
The imagery they place in the clay is drawn from visits to the desert, the Caribbean, the art of M. C. Escher, aboriginal dream paintings and the natural world around their studio.
Siegele and Haley use an unusual firing technique to achieve the quality of the surfaces on their work. They begin the firing process using propane and at around 1600F they begin to stoke the kiln with cedar splints and finish the firing with both gas and wood.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
White House Collection of American Craft, Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock, Arkansas
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Connell, Jo. Coloring Clay. London, England: A & C Black and Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Hopper, Robin. Making Marks: Discovering the Ceramic Surface. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2004.
Monroe, Michael. The White House Collection of American Crafts. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1995.
Citation: "The Marks Project." Last modified May 22, 2023. http://www.themarksproject.org:443/marks/haley