Mary C. Simmons has been a very active new member. Here we get to see where she comes from. She's an Albuquerque native.
How did you first get interested in clay?
I took an Art Class at Del Norte High School. I threw my first items on a wheel—a couple of small, very heavy bottles. I also learned how to trim away a multitude of sins.
After high school, my mother and I took a pottery class from Fred Wilson of the Muddy Wheel on 4thSt. in Albuquerque. Fred helped me increase my wheel-throwing skills. My mother was a painter—though she made some nice pieces, she hated how clay felt in her hands.
Weird.
Years later I took the Porcelain Class at UNM's College of Education--where the Queen herself--Cathy Cyman-- taught me the most useful throwing skills of all.
Describe your studio.
My studio is in 2 parts: in the garage—where the kiln, slab roller, potter’s wheel, tables, shelves etc live. I have outside storage for the multitude of glaze and clay-making materials I have.
I roll slabs out in the garage and work on hand-building pieces inside, in my other studio—which I use for making jewelry. It’s an addition a prior owner made to my house—with a door to the outside, which is steps away from the outside door to the garage studio.
"Shadowlands" by Mary Simmons. Photos by the artist. This piece was shown in COC 2026 at Santa Fe Community College Visual Arts Gallery.
Description of the Abstract presented by Mary Simmons to the Geological Society of America's Annual Meeting in 2005.
Describe your “work.”
I mostly am a hand-builder. My work these days comprises highly textured, functional things like vases, lamps, clocks, candle holders. My longtime time love of rocks led me to get Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in in Geology at UNM. I am heavily inspired by the forms and colors of the Earth, as well as the crystal structures of minerals and how we use them in ceramics.
I gave a talk at one of the Friday lunch/slide shows we did at UNM while I was a graduate student. I showed some pottery pieces I had made and glazed with ground up certain rocks that were likely suspects to produce a glaze. Most of the graduate students used various rocks in our research. After whacking/cutting off small pieces for such studies, the rest of the rock was chucked behind the Geology building.
A veritable storehouse of glaze materials…
After graduate school, I taught Intro Geology at the University of Southern Indiana—a rather rockless place with a big river (the Ohio). My students were all native ‘Hoosiers’ and had not seen many rocks in their landscape—but there is a lot of limestone with wonderful fossils. The Pentagon is faced with “Oolitic Limestone” from Indiana. The students were jazzed by that so I devised their final lab exam with a map of Downtown Evansville, and a field trip to find all three rock types (Igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic) on the buildings.
Believe it or don’t, Evansville had them all.
I was further inspired to deliver a talk at the Geological Society of America’ s annual meeting in Salt Lake City entitled “Out of the Periodic Chart and into the Fire”. Noting that science education generally isolates each study without much reference to the other branches—which leaves students confused and hating science.
But they like clay. Who doesn’t? EVERYONE LOVES CLAY.
So my talk was centered around teaching some chemistry, physics, and geology in the Art Department’s Ceramic Studio. For me, this type of education is the most valuable, because it relates the study to familiar things—like clay!-while sneaking in a little chemistry and math and physics.
Clay is the meeting place.
"Evolution" by Mary Simmons. Photos by the artist. This piece (both sides shown) was in the Sunport Show, Fall of 2025.
Describe any work you do that promotes “clay community."
I like to teach about the chemistry of rocks that pertain to the ceramic arts. I have given workshops in glaze formulation (at Lou D'Amico's Mudfish Pottery in Albuquerque) and hosted a couple of handbuilding and image transfer workshops on clay at my house for an art group I was in.
When you are not working in your studio, what do you enjoy?
I spend winter months working on clay projects; in the summer I make ‘street jewelry’ at the Downtown Growers Market in Albuquerque.
Within those months, I do some gardening—I’ve changed my front yard from the dirt and gravel “Zero-scaping” into flowers, trees and roses that don’t mind the heat and the lack of rainfall.
And sewing. A tiny bedroom in my house is the SewingRoom. I’ve made a few quilts, curtains, and clothes. I do some drawing and a little painting—I want the hot weather to go away so I can go out into our beautiful landscape to paint.
For me, Art is like a Box of Chocolates—so many varieties, so little time!
Do you play music in your studio? If yes, what do you listen to?
Usually not. I like quiet.
What other pottery do you have in your home?
I made almost all the dishes I use—combos of wheel-thrown and hand-built. I have a few plates, cups, bowls, lidded jars I bought, or traded at art shows.
What caused you to join NMPCA? Describe involvement with NMPCA, and how many years you have been involved.
I joined NMCPA last year…in September—just in time to enter and get accepted in the Sunport Show, and the Celebration of Clay show in Santa Fe. I joined for the community. I’d been living in Colorado and had returned during the Pandemic, when everyone was hidden in their houses.
I am interested in volunteering to help put these shows together, as well as to facilitate workshops, classes, and critiques.
Clay is the Meeting Place.
