Maker Spotlight Series

KATHLEEN KEENE JONES

Ceramic Artist

Artist Kathleen Jones at work in Smiley’s Art Room Collective

THE QUICK + FUN LOWDOWN:

• Favorite travel destination or past trip? Zanzibar 

• Favorite book and/or movie? Book: Less; Movie: The Usual Suspects 

• Favorite artist(s), designer(s), architect(s)? Georgia O'Keefe! 

• What's always playing in your studio — music, podcast, silence? Music, ideally from the 70s and 80s or pretty much anything that fellow artist Joe Schafer puts on the in the Smiley Art Room! 

• Finish this sentence: "Making things heals me."

Tell us about yourself — who are you and what do you make/create?

I am a ceramic artist working primarily in hand-built sculpture. My work explores the tension between strength and fragility — how something can feel precarious and grounded at the same time.

I build forms shaped by the landscapes I’ve called home — deserts, mountains, tidal edges, geothermal springs — places where elemental forces are visible and unfiltered. My career in multilateral diplomacy deeply shaped my sculptural language; living in regions marked by both beauty and complexity taught me that resilience is rarely symmetrical or polished.

The pieces I create often lean, tilt, cluster, or hover. They are intentionally imperfect. Rough clay remains exposed. Surfaces shift from matte to reflective. I am interested in the quiet structures that hold things up — in nature and in people — and in the beauty that emerges through imbalance.

How did you first discover your craft — what was the spark or what drew you to it?

I studied ceramics in college, but clay reached me earlier than that. I grew up in the Southwest, spending part of my youth on ranches. That early connection to land — to soil, to heat, to material — stayed with me.

For a long time, my professional life moved in a different direction. It wasn’t until years of living abroad — in Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Dominican Republic, and the Gulf (United Arab Emirates)— that my sculptural voice truly took shape. The elemental landscapes and the resilience of the communities within them gave me something I needed to translate physically.

Clay became the way I processed those experiences. Earth turned by water, hardened by fire, touched by air — the material itself mirrors the forces I’ve witnessed.

Where do you source your inspiration? What sparks a new idea or collection?

Place is always the starting point.

A sandstorm reshaping a horizon. A tide pool holding fragments the sea has left behind. The way geothermal water rises through rock. The submerged stillness beneath clear ocean waters.

Each collection begins with an environment — and with the emotional tension that environment carries. Sandstorms became a study of disruption and renewal. Tideworn grew from the quiet basins left when water retreats. Pagosa was rooted in reverence for land and inherited memory. Submerged explored pressure, suspension, and transformation beneath the surface.

I don’t illustrate landscapes. I try to embody what they do.

Is there a person, place, or experience that has most shaped your creative path?

Living in regions shaped by elemental extremes and geopolitical complexity changed me. Afghanistan’s austere mountains. South Sudan’s White Nile. The Musandam Peninsula where mountains fall directly into the sea.

But equally formative were the quiet inheritances of the American Southwest — the springs of Pagosa, the cairns along a river, the knowledge embedded in land long before I arrived.

I have learned that endurance is never flawless. That lesson runs through everything I build.

What are you currently working on or excited about?

Right now, I’m working on a collection inspired by the geography of the Four Corners, specifically Antelope Canyon and Red Cliffs, called Carved by Light. I also have plans to make a collection inspired by Watersheds. 

Is there a dream project or medium you'd love to explore?

I would love to create a site-responsive installation — something that interacts directly with landscape, light, or water. Work that lives outdoors, where weather becomes collaborator rather than threat.

I’m also intrigued by integrating subtle movement — not in a theatrical way, but in a way that deepens the sense of breath or suspended time within a piece.

How do you see your work adding to someone's home and collection?

In a home, I could see the pieces become quiet anchors — forms that invite you to walk around them, to notice shadow, to feel weight and balance. They shift with light throughout the day. They ask for a moment of attention, and in return, they offer steadiness.

I hope they bring a sense of groundedness — a reminder that strength can lean, that beauty can be asymmetrical, and that what endures is rarely polished.