Glen Echo Park's Stone Tower Gallery presents intimate exhibitions of work in the Park’s most historic structure. This gallery is a welcoming space for visitors and is well suited to solo or themed exhibitions featuring a small group of artists.
Saturday & Sunday | 12pm to 6pm
Stone Tower Gallery Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12 pm – 6 pm
Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 6 pm – 8 pm | During Art Walk
RSVP (preferred, not required)
The Stone Tower Gallery presents Still Kicking After All These Years, 1974-2024, a solo exhibition by Jeff Kirk, founder and Artistic Director of Glen Echo Pottery. This exhibition primarily includes current work in vessel form that reflects Kirk’s love of nature, form, texture, and shape as well as geological structures and surfaces. The pieces have been fired at high temperature with carbon trap Shino glaze, with shapes reflecting traditional Wabi Sabi influences. The show also includes a selection of past works created by Kirk, demonstrating his command of the medium and impressive career as a potter.
Artist Statement
It seems that I have two lives. First and foremost, I am a teacher; second, a ceramic artist. Most of my motivation comes from my teaching and our pottery community. Seeing students experiment with incorporating their passions, traditions, imagination, and unique vision in their own journey with clay continually inspires me as an artist in my life-long work with the medium. I also draw inspiration from my fascination with nature: rock, river, and sky. Finding new ways of echoing the rough and rugged beauty of nature through clay. My work also incorporates shapes and gestures inspired by music, which has always been a motivator and to this day it continually inspires and moves me through creating and listening.
About Jeff Kirk
In addition to being the founder and Artistic Director of Glen Echo Pottery, Jeff Kirk is also an instructor. As Artistic Director, Kirk manages studio operations and facilities; he also served as Executive Director from 2003-2023 and as full-time artist-in-residence and ceramics instructor at since 1974. Kirk teaches Glen Echo Pottery’s Continuing Wheel classes for intermediate and advanced students as well as Saturday morning Beginning and Intermediate Wheel classes. His teaching philosophy supports individual artistic development in all students. Kirk's artistic training includes studying at the ceramics programs of Montgomery College and the Anderson Ranch in Colorado. His award-winning work has been exhibited in many local and national shows; it can be found in private collections in this country and Europe. His public commissions include a ceramic mural for the Amazonian Building at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoo in Washington, DC. Kirk has mounted more than twenty gallery exhibitions at Glen Echo Park. Some have featured his work; others were group shows he curated of works by instructors and advanced students. He has juried ceramic art shows for other local organizations, including the Montgomery Potters and the Scope Gallery of the Torpedo Factory.
1968-1970 Montgomery College - Rockville, MD
1970-1972 Anderson Ranch - Snowmass, CO
1973-1975 Pots Unlimited - Glen Echo Park
1975-Present Founder, Artistic Director, and Instructor - Glen Echo Pottery
Stone Tower Gallery Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12 pm – 6 pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 6 pm – 8 pm
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