Gallery / Events
Keep up with the latest Yourist Studio Gallery news in our newsletter and on Instagram.
Gallery hours:
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 12:00-6:00 pm
Upcoming Exhibition / Event:
Yourist Studio Gallery Holiday Sale
Our holiday sale is a festive celebration of ceramics and the holiday season. So make time in your busy holiday schedule to escape the mall madness and join us for some holiday fun.
Our holiday event kicks off with a lively Artists' Reception featuring great company, delectable food and drink, and lots of seasonal conviviality. It's your opportunity to chat with our artists about their work and show your support for them while you tour the displays and enjoy toothsome holiday treats.
We're showcasing a wide array of unique, carefully hand-crafted ceramic works by 30 of our talented participants:
This festive holiday event only happens once a year, so do join us. There is plenty of free parking on site. We look forward to greeting you.
The sale continues in the gallery during regular hours through December 23, with special hours on December 24 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.
Current Exhibition / Event:
Great Lakes Cup Show
Celebrate the cup and the potters of the Great Lakes region.
Yourist Studio Gallery hosts The Great Lakes Cup Show, a juried exhibition presenting diverse forms, colors, textures, imagery, and techniques of Great Lakes ceramics via the cup.
The gallery was packed during the Great Lakes Cup Show opening reception as visitors admired the cups by juried and invited artists. At the conclusion of the reception, Alex Pratt received the Best in Show Award from Rose Gomez.
Other award winners include
Second Place
Mike Stumbras
Third Place
Natalie Liu
Honorable Mention
Darcy Bowden
Barbara Piper
Voting for the Peoples Choice Award remains open and will continue throughout the show, which runs through November 15. The recipient will be announced when the show ends.
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Great Lakes Cup Show juried artists
Sneak peek at juried artists' cups.
Our judges have chosen cups by these outstanding Great Lakes ceramic artists to appear in the show:
Ceramic cups are small objects with a big impact, and making cups presents potters with a unique challenge. As the most intimate of pottery ware, cups must be pleasing to the user's lip, hand, and eye. Cups must also serve their utilitarian purpose of being comfortable to hold and drink from. Come see how our juried artists have incorporated these qualities in their cups while realizing their own individual artistic visions of the cup.
Great Lakes Cup Show guest artists
Collage of invited artists' cups, clockwise from top left: Charlotte Grenier,
Elliott Kayser, Kenyon Hansen,
and Brian Westrick.
These outstanding potters are joining the Great Lakes Cup Show as invited artists. We are pleased to announce the addition of Elliott Kayser to our roster of invited artists.
Charlotte Grenier
Charlotte Grenier describes herself as a functional potter who "explores form and surface to create objects that accentuate food and actively participate in our daily life." Her most recent body of work focuses on "constructing patterned surfaces reminiscent of nostalgic textiles."
Kenyon Hansen
Kenyon Hansen is a full-time studio potter and educator in the Keweenaw Peninsula who creates "utilitarian objects that enrich the quotidian experience" and "are generated and inspired by the everyday experience, patch work quilts, structure and patterns found in nature." He soda fires his pieces, which he makes of porcelain and stoneware clays.
Elliott Kayser
Elliott Kayser is a full time studio artist, who has "always had a passion for sculpting animals." His current body of work is an exploration of zoomorphic vessels with "a playful balance between utility and decoration." Kayser says of his work: "More than anything I have fun making these pots. I make myself laugh, and want to share these moments with friends."
Tom Phardel
Tom Phardel is a sculptor who works primarily in clay and an Emeritus Professor of Craft and Material Studies, College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where he served as teacher and chair of ceramics for thirty years. His work has been praised as "notable for its sense of mystery, spirituality, and devoted connection to the natural world."
Brian Westrick
Brian Westrick iis a Michigan functional potter, who received his BFA in Fine Arts from Grand Valley State University in 2012 and later earned his MFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2018. Westrick's work has been nationally collected and is featured in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States. He won the 2025 Potters Guild Joan Otis Award for best potter in the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, The Original.
Great Lakes Cup Show jurors
The three panelists on the Great Lakes Cup Show jury are established, respected ceramic artists and teachers. We are pleased to introduce them to you.
Brigitte Lang
Brigitte Lang achieved the distinction of "Master Craftsperson" in Ceramics, the highest professional qualification in Germany, requiring practical and theoretical expertise in the field. Lang has worked in ceramics for over 25 years, learning, studying, teaching, and producing signature works of functional ware.
John Leyland
John Leyland is retired from his position as Ceramics Studio Coordinator at the University of Michigan. Leyland also served on the adjunct faculty of the College for Creative Studies, where he taught wheel-based classes as well as some hand-building and sculpture classes in the Ceramics Department. He received an MFA from Miami University.
Kay Yourist
Kay Yourist is the owner of Yourist Studio Gallery. Soon after graduating from Bowling Green State University with a degree in Fine Arts, Ceramics, Kay opened her own pottery studio in Ann Arbor. That studio has since grown to incorporate an exhibition gallery, a pottery shop with tools and supplies for potters, and an extensive calendar of pottery classes covering all aspects of pottery making.
Past Exhibitions and Gallery Events:
Short Stories Exhibition
Yourist Studio Gallery invites you to "Short Stories," our exhibition of thought-provoking sculptures by ceramic artist Lie Ladendorf.
- Exhibition hours:
- May 31 through July 12
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 12:00-6:00 pm
- Artist's reception:
- Friday, June 13
- 6:00-8:00 pm
Humans have been telling stories, well, almost as long as there have been humans. Storytelling is common to all cultures. And since the earliest days of cave paintings, bone carvings, and clay goddess statuettes, stories have been told in visual as well as verbal form.
Lie Ladendorf is a sculptor who loves stories and conveys that love through the medium of clay. As a story teller and artist, Lie expresses her ideas "through use of visual metaphor and archetypal props."
Why does Lie choose stories as themes for her sculptures? She explains, "We tell stories as a reflex: to light the dark, to share our lives and fears and hopes.
Lie's journey with clay has led her from her start making tiles to her current immersion in sculpting. Join us in the gallery to see what stories Lie's sculptures tell you.
Soda Show
It's the first birthday of the new soda kiln, and we are celebrating in our gallery with a display of soda-fired pots from the first eight firings of the kiln.
- Display hours:
- May 7 through 24
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 12:00-6:00 pm
Our display features pieces made by students, teachers, and community members who bravely sent their work through the new kiln not knowing what would come out on the other side. As it happens, the unpredictability of the soda and flame not only made for some beautifully dramatic results, but also some lovely subtle ones. According to Kay, the firings are a work in progress. She says, "We're still tweeking the process and getting better results all the time."
The display also includes a photo montage of a soda firing in progress. If you would like to experience the soda firing process first-hand, there are still spots in our Atmospheric Soda Firing classes, starting later in May.
LIGHTPLAY
A vibrant new exhibition, "LIGHTPLAY," featuring artful ceramic lamps by highly regarded local ceramic artists Elliott Kayser and Kate Tremel will be on display at Yourist Studio Gallery from February 21 through April 5.
- Exhibition hours:
- February 21 through April 5
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays
- 12:00-6:00 pm
- Artists' reception:
- Friday, March 21
- 6:00-8:00 pm
Elliott Kayser's whimsical animal lamps include a whole host of dinosaurs, plus elephants and other animals you might see on safari in Africa. Kate Tremel's elegant pierced lamps cast a lovely contemplative play of light and shadow. For both artists, these works arise from and promote the joy of light and play.
Elliott Kayser is a full-time studio artist living in Ypsilanti, MI. Kayser "has always had a passion for sculpting animals, and the latest body of work is a playful exploration of zoomorphic pieces, often inspired by fatherhood." Kayser "likes to tell people that his five-year-old daughter, Lenora, is his product manager, soliciting suggestions for what the next big success will be: 'Dad, you should make another triceratops, people are gonna eat those up!'" Lenora, says Kayser, is "always right."
For Kayser, "The zoomorphic vessel is a playful balance between utility and decoration. I marvel at how many animal-shaped artifacts were buried with loved ones in cultures all across the world, and are now preserved and still cherished. These things mattered to the people in the past, and they still resonate with us today, and help us feel connected with our ancestors."
Kate Tremel is a full-time ceramic artist, who works and teaches in Ann Arbor, MI. Tremel's lamps are from her series "Breathe." Tremel uses a wooden paddle and round stone anvil to create the ceramic globes for her lamps, a technique she learned years ago in Peru.
Tremel's globes are "...slowly raised by beating, turning, and drying the clay repeatedly until the walls are thinly stretched and the form is filled with life. I pierce the fragile, unfired walls of the vessel with a tapered tool and then painstakingly carve the holes with a thin blade. The piercings give visual access to the interior of the form and create a tension with the fragility of the ceramic material. When the pot is illuminated the light fills the vessel and physically embodies the energy that it contains. The piercings allow this energy to flow beyond the walls of the form and into the surrounding space."
Visit our new exhibition and bask in the glow of these brilliant ceramic lamps.
Class Registration
See our class schedule and register online.
New Tool Alert
We've added the newest pottery tools to our stock, including Clayprons, Michael Sherrill's Drag Tool and Mudshark, MKM wooden texture stamps, and Xiem texture rollers, clay cutters, flexible rulers, slip trailers, clay bag ties, and expandable art studio bags.
Pottery Tools
We offer a wide selection of tools, including a variety of ribs, carving and shaping tools, sponges, texture tools, brushes, cutoff wires, and much more.
Studio Newsletter
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