Guyla Amyx Ceramics

Though she has dabbled in paint (She holds a BFA in studio painting and her MFA was a double major: studio painting and studio ceramics.) and in digital art (She got the bug for a few years when Adobe went global), her predominant medium is clay. Guyla has worked with a variety of clays in a variety of ways, from large scale figurative sculpture to wheel thrown tableware. Working with such variety is endemic to teaching fulltime college ceramics. Encouraging students to explore the wide range of possibilities is the nature of the game, though it leaves little time for the instructor to push beyond the boundaries of the demo. Focused art making is relegated to winter and summer breaks and weekends. Since recently retiring from all that teaching, Guyla has been able to focus on two areas of ceramics that require more attention, time and commitment than the typical – hand carved high-fired porcelain with celadon glazes, and high-fired crystalline-glazed porcelains. Both of these methods of working are time-consuming and require meticulous attention to detail and process.   Guyla is interested in the beauty of the landscape she lives in. She loves the bugs and birds and lazy rock lizards in her backyard. Eucalyptus seedpods intrigue her. At the same time, the scientific stuff that happens to zinc when it’s put into a glaze and fired in a certain way – the physics of the glaze ingredients and their reaction to heat – fascinates her. And of course, the absolutely beautiful unique results of a good firing of those crystal glazes is like a divine gift. Every firing offers up a new set of “what ifs” for Guyla.