Jeff Pender

Above top photo by Hannah Miller. Above bottom photo courtesy of jeffpender.com.

Jeff Pender’s first memory of clay is the red kind he turned over with a 1938 Allis-Chalmers tractor, growing up on his grandmother’s farm in Newell, outside Charlotte.

“We did that every Saturday morning,” he remembers.

He’s long since graduated to more refined clays, teaching at Central Piedmont Community College for 12 years, and this year exhibiting his ceramics in shows including the Palm Beach Contemporary Art Show in Florida and the American Craft Council show in Baltimore.

He made small clay tiles, inlaid with glass and incised with lines, for CSA shareholders to hang on their walls, but he also likes large sculptures with moving parts, like his “Endless Line Totem” in the Clayworks gallery in Charlotte.

Learn more at jeffpender.com