Bio:

Sarah Frederick (1935–2023) was a celebrated potter and ceramic artist. She was known for her painted fruit/vegetable motifs and her velvety matte glazes. Frederick founded the city’s annual pottery sales and mentored many younger artists. She was also one of the founding members of the ENID: Generations of Women Sculptors.

Frederick grew up in Louisville but left to earn a BFA in Ceramics from Mills College in California. She returned to Louisville to earn her MA in Art Education from the University of Louisville, where she studied with Tom Marsh. At the Appalachian Craft Center in Tennessee, she studied with Joe Bova, Sandy Simon, who taught her how to paint on pots, and Cynthia Bringle. She also operated a successful producgtion studio untio 1884, after which she shifted her focus to paper sculpture and handmade books.

A 2008 oral history interview with Sarah Frederick, recorded by the Kentucky Historical Society, is accessible here.

Statement:

I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky but as a young woman left for California to study art. This changed my vision of how life might be lived. I came away in love with ceramic arts, and the look and feel of California in the fifties. I have spent a lifetime in clay, studying further in Maine, Kentucky, New York, and Canada. Most of the important events in my life have centered around a relationship with clay. Landscape and organic form are of primary inspiration. Clay, glaze and fire easily create the aspect of both color and the pottery of many eras also figure in. My instincts as storyteller have urged me to move aside from vessel making into ceramic sculpture so that three-dimensional form expresses what I see and want to say.