LULA Pottery is Carisa Miller and a flock of chickens in a backyard garden pottery studio in Southwest Portland. Since beginning with clay in 2018 and initially putting all her eggs in Instagram, she has slowing ventured out into the art community in person and now attends several fine arts festivals annually as they will have her including; Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts where she was awarded a blue ribbon for artistic achievement in 2025, Edmonds Art Festival, and Wild Arts Festival. She is member of Alberta Street Gallery, a mentor through Pacific Northwest College of Art, has been featured in Ceramics Monthly Magazine, gave a talk for Tacoma Pottery Salon, and does have an inordinately large Instagram presence with over seventy-five thousand followers. She has held several open studio events of her own in the past and her hens have proven particularly excellent co-hosts.
"My clay practice is craft centric and material driven, coherent via a spare, organic aesthetic in both design and decoration. Both functional and sculptural efforts are form conscious, minimalist expressions of the natural world embodied as intimate and essential companions. Functional work is predominately wheel thrown, maintaining simple lines, understated and minimally adorned, with a focus on utility and inclined toward organic surface variations representative of the chemical changes and interactions of the materials. This work generally features a dark black-brown stoneware, with glazes formulated in-house and fired in an electric kiln. Smoke fired pieces are derived from a light porcelain stoneware clay body. After an initial firing in the studio, they are wrapped in organic combustibles from the garden and chicken yard; wood shavings, errant grains, droppings, lost feathers, dried grasses, vines, nut shells, and various dried flowers.They are finished in an above ground fire pit, given over to the whims of flame, silhouettes and shadows of carbonized materials captured in the clay. Effects recall the movement of smoke and the charcoal of the spent fire, dappled over alabaster clay, each form a galaxy in itself." |
Media: Ceramics/Pottery
Studio Number: 98
Address: 8235 SW 10th Ave Portland OR 97219
Community: SW Portland
Accessibility: Not Wheelchair accessible (slight slope coming from street to backyard, with at least one step, uneven terrain across backyard, three full steps onto studio porch, studio not large enough to accommodate wheelchair mobility)
Email: carisa@lulapottery.com
Website: lulapottery.com
Instagram: @lulapottery
