Who We Are
Gena Mavuli | Founder
JP Clay is owned by Roslindale/Boston resident and artist Gena Mavuli. She’s most at home with her hands in clay or stoking a kiln fire deep into the night. Her ceramics practice, and her life practice, is all about experience and experimentation which is evident in the range of her work. She holds this space and it’s Roslindale sister studio, Create, for the community to explore with freedom and joy, with an eye on the experience more than results.
Photography by Carlie Febo
Vanessa Norris | Studio Manager
Vanessa (she/her) has been working in clay for over twelve years. She graduated with a BFA in Ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and moved across the country to work for potters in Park City, UT and Seattle, WA before settling back in Boston where her love for clay began. She makes colorful cloud & rainbow pottery, marrying pastel colors with voluminous wheel-thrown forms. When she's not hunched over decorating a mug in her studio, you can usually find her cuddling her cats or biking along the Charles River on her lavender cruiser. She’s a lover of handmade objects, tattoos, the color purple, cats, and all things clay.
Kristin Powers | Instructor
Kristin (she/her) is a sculptural installation artist focused on creating spaces while leaving room for reflection. Working with multiple mediums, lens-based media, and sound, Powers explores an ever-evolving iterative landscape, looking for resonant frequencies where many feel.
Powers holds a BFA in Ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has attended residencies at MERZ – Scotland, Vermont Studio Center, Haystack, and Penland. Powers’ recent curatorial projects include The Art of Lobbying, Raising the Gavel, Elemental, What Do We Have To Say?, and The Art of Storytelling. Her work has recently been shown at MassArt x SoWa in Boston, First Street Gallery in NYC, The Black Box Gallery in Oregon, and SAGE Gallery in Wyoming.
Amy Wilson | Instructor
Amy is a ceramicist, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. She has been practicing ceramics for over ten years and specializes in hand-building sculptural forms. In her practice, she integrates several disciplines spanning ceramics, wood-working, paper mache, and fiber arts to construct large-scale sculptures and installations. She sees clay as a very valuable opponent and teacher, as it constantly demands our flexibility, investigation, and inventiveness. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Additionally, Amy has worked as a visual arts instructor for several K-12 public schools and possesses a deep love for helping students express themselves through the arts.
Warwick Laing | Instructor
Warwick (they/he) is a mixed media artist and educator who earned their BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2023. While their interest in the arts is wide-ranging, their work is primarily based in clay, specifically wheel-thrown objects that find their place in homes or sculptural installations. As an educator, Warwick strives to help their students make connections between their day-to-day lives and their creative expression, both inside and outside of the classroom.
Moon Rodríquez Diestler | Instructor
Moon’s (he/him) ceramic sculptures, installations, and performance work lace together ritual, repetition, and practice in order to raise questions about identity, and existence. Rodríguez constantly challenges the sanctity of historically elitist materials such as porcelain, oil paints, and gold leaf. These materials are used carefully yet unconventionally, and reborn within the installations created. Moon received his BFA with a concentration in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and received his MFA from the University of Delaware in December 2019. Currently, Rodríguez is making art in his apartment that he shares with his partner and two cats in Brighton, MA. He works the studio manager at the Brookline Arts Center in addition to his work at JP Clay.
Katie McColgan | Instructor
Katie McColgan is an interdisciplinary artist and ceramics educator living and working in Massachusetts. She holds a BFA in Ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA in Art Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work has been exhibited nationally, and she currently teaches at the Brookline Arts Center and JP Clay. Katie first encountered clay through a local community art center, an experience that continues to shape her deep commitment to communal learning spaces and craft education.
Hannah Kiernan | Instructor
Hannah is currently a senior at Emmanuel College pursuing a BA in studio art and secondary education with a minor in ceramics. She loves working with students of all ages and helping them create. She has spent her time in school learning how to be a successful teacher and creating art. Hannah mostly works with clay and specifically wheel thrown forms, making both functional ware and sculptural pieces.