Anita Powell, the artist who created Migration, the ceramic piece on the cover of this issue of Midwest Art Fairs, started exploring the sculptural possibilities of the dress form thirteen years ago when the idea of using clay in much the same way as fabric occurred to her. “I was already building my sculptures in two parts with a front and back, and I thought, why not go back to the garment. It was fertile imagery given all it implied metaphorically and figuratively.”

Migration, like all of Powell’s sculptures, has two distinct sides (see gallery) and a personal story to tell. Every spring Powell travels from Nacogdoches, Texas where she teaches art to southern Indiana for the summer and from there, to northern Minnesota where her in-laws stay at a cabin they’ve been renting every summer since 1955. The path she follows is the same path the eastern meadowlark travels on its migratory flyway.

Anita Powell is an Assistant Professor of Art at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas and has been teaching there since 2000. She was awarded a McKnight Residency in 2004 and in the fall of 2005 spent three months at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a resident artist. Some of the work she created during the residency is currently part of a traveling exhibition sponsored by the Northern Clay Center.

Powell’s ceramic sculptures will be shown this spring at the Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft in Louisville, KY as part of the 2007 N.C.E.C.A. National Exhibition. Anita Powell will also be an artist in residence at the Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska this summer and fall.

For more examples of Powell’s ceramic sculptures, browse through the image gallery.