Marsha Kitkowski Fine Handcrafted Porcelain
Marsha Kitkowski will be debuting her Briar Chapel Studio during the first two weeks in December at the 25thh Chatham Studio Tour. She creates delicate hand built and carved porcelain ware – vases, bowls and sculptural objects, each enhanced by her original carvings. She has been working with clay for over ten years, after taking courses at the Arts Center in Carrboro and Claymakers in Durham.
Marsha’s journey in art was circuitous, but it was always anchored in pursuit of her own creativity. Growing up in the San Francisco area, she knew early on that she was drawn to art. “I pretty much knew that I wanted to be a medical illustrator since the age of 14.” She quips. “In biology class all the other kids wanted to use my drawings to study.” She graduated from University of California at Berkeley and finished the graduate program in Art as Applied to Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University.
For her first 10 years she worked in San Francisco at Letterman Army Hospital, then freelanced in the Bay Area until moving to Augusta. She taught and then became chairman of the medical illustration graduate program at the Medical College of Georgia. After teaching, Marsha sought a locale that had strong teaching hospitals to support her medical illustration practice. That turned out to be Chapel Hill.
She created illustrations for teaching, for journals and medical books, for medical/legal interpretations in the courtroom. During her long career, she watched many changes in traditional techniques in medicine and art. When she retired, she took her first clay class and the pull of her inner creativity was too strong to resist.
She dedicates about 20 hours a week to studio work. Her love of nature inspires her designs. “The more I create, the more I want to create!”
Marsha’s pieces sell from $50 to $500.
Her work has been shown at the Ackland Museum Store, Claymakers in Durham, and at Art in the Village in Fearrington. The 25th Chatham Studio Tour will be the first time art-lovers will have the opportunity to experience Marsha Kitkowski and her unique work in their “natural habitat’.
