Taylor Woodruff is a New York City–based ceramic artist and studio technician. Twelve years on wildland fire crews, seven of them as a smokejumper, taught him to stay level when everything around him is not.

He came to clay the way he came to rock: by looking closely. His work often combines thrown and hand built components, yielding truly original sculptures and pots, which he fires in electric, gas, and soda kilns. He works in three languages, and keeps the kind of studio where anyone can feel at home.

Magma Vase

Heated from the outside during the throwing process, this piece explores both the elasticity and the fragility of the medium. Clay, like us, can be at once rigid and supple, friable and resilient.

In Whose Grip

A raven whose wing is becoming a hand, clutching and suffocating the bird. A modular composition of thrown and hand built components, soda fired.

Wood Grain Composite

White slip and black underglaze painted onto black stoneware