Feature Artist: Rosa Friedrichs

By Gina Malone

Ceramics artist Rosa Friedrichs will never run out of ideas for her work because she taps into her store of memories as well as contemplating simple, everyday objects—and her reflections find their way into her creations. “I experience poignant moments and decide to make a mug about it,” she says. “It’s a fun way to experience life, always being open to experiences that will draw out a new design from me.” An example is her Peeper Mug, created after sitting on her front porch on a warm spring evening and hearing the songs of peepers. Onto a red clay/white slip mug near the handle, she placed a life-sized peeper. “No other decoration,” she says, “just a small frog making a strong statement by itself on a big mug.”

A childhood memory of a potted Calamansi orange tree, a time she dealt with physical therapy for joint pain and using double-yolked eggs from the farmers market to cook “lucky” breakfasts all have inspired mug designs.

Sometimes, though, it’s about the joy of exploring different designs rather than celebrating personal connections. One of her newest pieces is a vase called Endless Possibilities, decorated with sgraffito flowers and fins of clay coming off of the form in all directions, and on display now at Odyssey Gallery of Ceramic Arts. “I had wanted to make a piece that allowed the imagery to come off of the pot into the viewer’s three-dimensional space,” Friedrichs says. “The process relit a creative spark in me and inspires me to take the time away from production work to explore this new creative avenue.”

The flowers she chose for the piece—bee balm, blue vervain, California poppy and giant poppy—are ones she admires for small details such as multiple petals and yellow stamen. “The feeling I get when I look at the carved flowers and the beauty in their tiny details is also that of endless possibilities and hope,” Friedrichs says. “So many hard things are going on in the world right now and choosing to focus on and not lose sight of small beautiful details can be an act of resistance. Art can give people the energy to keep resisting, and puts the spirit into movements.”

Friedrichs grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Lexington, VA, where she found validation at home for the creativity she embraced as a child, explored in her college years and employs today as an artist. Her father works as a historical restoration stone mason and her mother as an artist. “We have wonderful pastel drawings of hers from that time of my siblings and me and our goats in the woods and fields surrounding our house,” Friedrichs says. “I am the youngest of five siblings and happily followed in my siblings’ footsteps as we explored the woods, rivers and mountains of Rockbridge County.”

As a child, she was encouraged by both of her parents, and her mother inspired confidence by allowing her to use high-quality art materials. “I never doubted that my artistic output was just as meaningful as hers or anyone’s, so I kept practicing and making,” Friedrichs says. In high school, she took all of the art classes, especially enjoying printmaking with linoleum blocks and screen printing, which would later influence her sgraffito technique.

She took a ceramics class on a whim during her first semester of college, and by junior year she had taken enough for a major. Her sister, also a ceramics artist, introduced her to Karen Newgard at the River Arts District’s Curve Studios while she was still in college and she worked there for six weeks. “I wedged clay and did other small tasks and she taught me about sgraffito and fired a few of my pieces in her soda kiln,” she says. “It was really wonderful and gave me direction for my Senior Ceramics show.”

After college, Friedrichs moved to Asheville, and she is now a member artist at Odyssey Gallery of Ceramic Arts. She spends her time making ceramics and working as a nanny. “I love the balance of work and being with children,” she says. “Making pottery in my studio is good alone time, but working with children gets me out in the world and moving which is a good social and physical balance to making pottery.”

Her productivity briefly gave way to new priorities after Helene, but she is back in her studio now creating her two main bodies of work: black and white sgraffito reminiscent of linoleum block printing, and red clay, white slip and colorful sgraffito with more painterly imagery. “The good stories mostly go along with my functional pieces, because they’re the most ready canvases for new ideas and immediate expression,” she says. “I like the idea of people holding my work and it giving them little boosts throughout their day to influence the ways they want to make the world a better place. We all need beauty and art to give us energy to resist the bad in the world and fight for the good.”

Learn more at RosaFriedrichsCeramics.com. Friedrichs will participate in Summerfest June 14, 12–4 p.m., at The Whale, in West Asheville, and at The Big Crafty, July 12–13. Find her work at Odyssey Gallery of Ceramic Arts, located at 238 Clingman Avenue Ext. in the River Arts District.