Anderson Bailey is a native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he was introduced to clay as a teenager. Since then, he has stayed enamored with the material and worked for many production and studio potters over the years.  He developed an appreciation for thoughtful design through his exposure to functional objects, Scandinavian design, and lots of buildings.

Anderson graduated with a BFA in Ceramics from the Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Tech University. He then moved to Portland, Oregon, where he continued to work for clay and glass artists, as well as develop his own work. In 2010 he moved back south to Chattanooga, TN, where he and 4 other craft artists started a studio in the armpit of the smelly city. It is there now that he continues to develop his designs, and explore more building processes

 

My impulse to create pottery stems from the enjoyment of working with my hands and using something I’ve made. I want the end result to be a visceral impulse from the user to engage it, use it, and feel comforted and amused.

The son of an architect and a botanist, I feel I’ve been informed throughout my childhood by contemporary design and fanciful decoration. This emerges in my work as I sketch out graphic silhouettes of forms, embellished with simple motifs. When translating sketches into dimension, I let the marks inherent to my process show, adding movement to the forms and sustaining an aesthetic throughout my work.