Kelly E Potter is a visual artist based in West Stockbridge, MA, currently working from her studio in Northampton, MA. Potter received her BFA degree in Honors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Talent Award, George M. Wardlaw Scholarship, and Second Place Juried Junior Senior Show Award.
She has apprenticed with National Sculpture Society academic figure sculptors, Great Barrington based oil painters, worked production wood fired pottery, and sculpted props for film/tv. She studied Illustration at Pratt University in Brooklyn, NY, and is academically trained in the traditional methods of figure drawing and sculpting from her time at Lyme Academy, CT. Potter continues to work with each of these mediums and participates in wood firings at anagama kilns in Litchfield County, CT.
While working in sculpture, painting, and video, Potter circles the same themes in her body of work. Having grown up rather isolated off a dirt road in rural West Stockbridge, MA, Kelly spent her childhood observing and exploring the woods. Her relationship to plants and animals; learning by seeing and doing; and experiencing more connection to wildlife than anything else has lead her to a visual narrative in her creative work where New England flora and fauna are the centerpiece. Visual motifs lead into deeper themes of nostalgia, memory, environmental politics, human and animal coexistence, and the attributable uncertainty of a constantly evolving, fast moving outer world.
Solo Exhibitions
Friend or Foe , Morris Studio Gallery, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA, 2023
Bittersweet, Hampden Gallery, Amherst, MA, May 5th - June 1st, 2018
Girl of the Woods , Fuel Coffee Shop, Great Barrington, MA, 2015
Group Exhibitions and Features
Jane Sinauer Curated Collection , Snow Farm, Williamsburg, MA, 2025
Awarded First Place in Sculpture, Annual Holyoke Arts League Exhibition , Wistariahurst, Holyoke, MA, 2025
Annual Holyoke Arts League Exhibition , Wistariahurst, Holyoke, MA, 2025
Art in the Berkshires Juried Art Show , Eastover Contemporary Art Space, Lenox, MA, 2025
Cottage Street Studios Past and Present , Elusie Gallery, Easthampton, MA, 2025
The 13th Biennial State of Clay Ceramics Exhibition , Lexington Arts and Crafts Society, Lexington, MA, 2025
Artist of the Month , Pinch, Northampton, MA, 2024
Kiln Access , The Hatch, Brooklyn, NY, 2023
Berkshire Artist Residency Pop Up Show , Berkshire Art Center Gallery, Pittsfield, MA, 2023
ClayWay Studio Tour Artist, Cornwall Bridge Studios, Cornwall Bridge CT, 2022
Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, Hiroshi Nakayama’s Studio, Worthington, MA, 2021
ClayWay Studio Tour Artist, Cornwall Bridge Studios, Cornwall Bridge CT, 2021
30 under 30 Festival, The Foundry, West Stockbridge, MA, 2020
L’Atelier Berkshires Gallery, Great Barrington, MA, 2019
Selected Junior Senior Show, Herter Gallery, Amherst, MA, 2018
Selected Art in SAB, Lee Edwards Gallery, Amherst, MA, 2018
7th Annual Small Works Show, Hope and Feathers Gallery, Amherst, MA, 2017
7:7 Pop Up Show, Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, Pittsfield, MA, 2017
30 Under 30, No. Six Depot Gallery, West Stockbridge, MA, 2017
40th Annual Selected Student Exhibition, Chauncey Sillman Gallery, Old Lyme, CT, 2016
Girl of the Woods, West Stockbridge Town Hall, West Stockbridge, MA, 2015
Selected Student Holiday Exhibition, Chauncey Sillman Gallery, Old Lyme, CT, 2015