Being raised in New York City never stopped Eve Behar from her love of nature and especially animals. In Eve's early years, she was lucky to live next to Forest Park and loved exploring what seemed like deep woods even though Queens Boulevard was right there. Eve was also fortunate to go to summer camp and visit her grandfather at his home near the ocean to experience the outdoors away from the urban bustle. Early on, Eve discovered the arts as a way to express her creative side. With tremendous family support, trying all different forms of art from drawing to dance to acting, when Eve came upon clay, it was a done deal.
In 1991, Eve Behar took her first ceramics class in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She continued to take classes through college and after at the many studios around the city while also being a grunt working in television production. In 1995 she went to Florence for a year to study ceramics, painting, and art history at the Studio Art Center International for which she received a Post Baccalaureate Diploma. Upon returning from Italy, Eve worked as an assistant making slip cast production work while pursuing her own clay career. In 2001, Eve once again went back to full time international study at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada. There she spent three intensive years refining her skills and techniques and developing a body of work. Eve was very happy to accept the highest award of Best in Show at the Graduate Show of 2004. Since 2004 and returning to New York, Eve has been in various wholesale and retail shows, gallery exhibitions and featured on the Ceramics Monthly website and the cover of The Potters Council 2015 Calendar. She also is a past president of The Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons and former director of Celadon Clay Art Gallery and Shop. Eve maintains her studio practice at home in Sag Harbor, New York where she is happily potting near the beach surrounded by nature with visits from the local squirrels, chipmunks, birds and occasional deer.
ADRIENNE G. FIERMAN has been working with clay for over 25 years, exploring the traditional hand-building methods of coiling and pinching. After studying at Greenwich House in NYC, she attended workshops at Anderson Ranch, Peter’s Valley, Japan, and the Taos Art School, where she felt inspired by the Native American approach of “listening to the clay” and working intuitively. The quiet, organic approach of Japanese ceramics has also had a powerful influence on her aesthetic sensibility.
Mary Jaffe earned her BFA in Ceramics from LIU Southampton, NY. A five year production pottery apprenticeship followed as well as postgraduate studies at Instituto Allende in Mexico and Penland School in North Carolina. She has been working as a studio potter since 1980 creating wheel thrown altered forms in her Bridgehampton NY studio.
For the past 20 years Mary has enjoyed exploring clay with children, helping them create and discover a passion for clay. Mary heads the Ceramics Major at the Ross Camp and teaches in the Ross School’s after school and special programs. She has taught extensively in community programs including senior centers, libraries, churches, camps, museums, childcare centers and after-school programs. Mary has been working with the kids at Clay Art Studios of the Hamptons since they opened.
LYNN LEFF HAS BEEN immersed in art: selling art, collecting art, and enlightening herself with visits to art museums, galleries and artist studios for years. it wasn’t Until she walked into a clay studio, that the desire of wanting to create art herself had occurred to her.
since then, Clay has become her art form — She became lost in it and mesmerized with clay over the past several years. In fact, her first stop was the Clay Potato in Bridgehampton, NY.
She THEN began her work throwing clay, AND TODAY, She is primarily a hand builder, although she enjoys the liberties of combining the two processes.
Touching, feeling and forming the clay is the most satisfying to lynn. The lesson for her; it’s the process that matters. Every moment she spends handling clay is a precious moment to her.
Lynn creates both functional and non-functional ceramics that often express a quirky sense of humor.
she teaches children privately and in group settings and loves watching them create and involve themselves in the material.
Alicia Mack is an Art educator and has taught ceramics and fine art at the university and community college level since 2008. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the University of Miami, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the University of Florida, Gainesville.
In addition to her teaching, Alicia has served as a visiting artist at numerous colleges, universities and art centers, such as the Armory Art Center in Palm beach (Soda Firing). She was the recipient of a residency at Red Lodge Clay center in Montana.
and has attended both national and international workshops, including Penland School of Arts and Crafts, Arrowmont, Anderson Ranch Art Center, and Curaumilla Art center in Valparaiso, Chile to build and fire a kiln that uses recycled oil.
Alicia teaches wheel throwing and hand building for all ages, as well as specialty enliven events for the Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons. She is one of the teachers at the Clay Art Studios of the Hamptons, has a home studio, and lives with her husband and two children in Hampton Bays, New York.
