Many fairy tales begin on an ordinary day. Then, something extraordinary happens.
That’s what occurred in the art studio of ceramicist Gerit Grimm in 2010. Grimm, who had long created ceramics with light colored clay and bedazzling glazes, came across some raw, dark clay that somebody had left behind.
She didn’t like the darkness of the iron-rich clay, so she began to use it up to get rid of it — first by throwing pots on her potter’s wheel and then, by making a little sculpture just for fun.
“I gave the (sculptural) piece to a student to fire, because I didn’t even really care” about it, said the German-born Grimm, who was teaching in California at the time and now heads the ceramics program at UW-Madison.