Hayne Bayless

I grew up in Seattle, and my interest in clay began when I found an old potter's wheel gathering dust in a corner of the high school art room. The art teacher knew just enough about pottery to point me to Bernard Leach's "A Potter's Book," which became my guide. I had a half-dozen lessons at age eighteen with a potter in Tokyo, but managed to avoid any other formal instruction in ceramics. I abandoned the wheel early on, drawn to the freedom of hand-building. In 1993, after ten years at a perfectly good job as a journalist, I quit to make pots. I put out work at my first craft show in a churchyard in Chester, CT, where I sold three pieces – two of them to a good friend. These days I show work in galleries in Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles. The Smithsonian Craft Show and the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show have given me top awards. My first studio was a tiny basement I shared with a washer, dryer, and stack of snow tires. To navigate the tight quarters I sometimes had to walk sideways, which led to the business name Sideways Studio. It also applies to a particular approach to things; instead of encountering an idea head-on, looking at it from a different angle can help avoid the traps of one's own assumptions. I have a larger studio now and it’s nonetheless cluttered, but I don't have to walk sideways.