Artist Bio

Hayne Bayless first got interested in clay when he came across an old potter's wheel in a corner of his high school art room. The art teacher pointed him to Bernard Leach's A Potter's Book, which became his guide. Other than lessons with a potter in Tokyo as a late teen, Hayne managed to avoid any formal education in ceramics.

After a college career that spanned four schools and seven attempted majors over 12 years, Hayne emerged with a degree in journalism. In 1993, After ten years at a perfectly good job as a newspaper reporter and editor he quit and became a potter. At his first craft show, on a small-town churchyard lawn, he sold three pieces – two to a good friend who he suspects felt sorry for him. More recently he’s won top awards at the Smithsonian Craft Show and the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show.

Hayne abandoned wheel-throwing early on, lured by the freedom hand-building offers. He set up his first studio in a tiny basement he shared with a washer and dryer, a stack of snow tires, mice and the snakes that ate them. To navigate the cramped quarters he sometimes had to slide sideways, and so the space became Sideways Studio. It also applies to a certain way of looking at things; instead of encountering an idea head-on, you might approach it from a different angle, even sideways. That way we might avoid the traps of our own assumptions. His studio is above ground now, larger and still cluttered, but he doesn't have to walk sideways.

Artist Statement

The unintended result, too often misread as a mistake, is a fertile source of new ideas. The trick is not to get in the way of clay's inherent desire to express. The techniques of hand-building let me take advantage of clay's power to capture and reveal gesture. I'm intrigued by what happens when clay is rolled, stretched, pressed, bent, cut and put back together. I love what spawns in the friction between what I'd like the material to do and what it would rather do.