By Lucy Lazarony
Stop by Cloud House Pottery in Artists Alley in Delray Beach and you’ll find Ian Levinson and his mother Ellen “Starr” Levinson creating pots and paintings and sculptures.
Ian, 46, has been a ceramic artist for 32 years. On his potter’s wheel, he creates functional pieces such as bowls, cups and mugs and one-of-a-kind art pieces. In her studio, Ellen paints and sculpts, often adding her sculptures — a face, a leaf, a flower — to her son’s ceramic art pieces.
“We collaborate,” Ian Levinson says. “All the faces and all the sculptures on the pots. She does that. That’s my mom.”
Ellen, 73, also offers suggestions for colors for the vast array of pottery that Ian creates. The shelves of Cloud House Pottery are lined with a colorful assortment of large and small vases, lamps and large pots adorned with Ellen’s sculptures.
“The thing she helps me out with is coloring and matching,” Ian says.
A visual artist from a very young age, Ellen studied drawing and oil painting in private lessons at age 9. She studied graphic arts and illustration at the Pratt Institute in New York.
“Some of them were my directions and some were his,” Ellen says of the ceramic art pieces displayed in the studio where they have worked together since 2011.
“It’s really nice working with Ian in the studio. He asks my opinion and I ask his opinion. We try to put in a minimum of four to five hours a day… He’s very easy to work with. He’s real easygoing. He’s an excellent teacher.”
It was Ian who encouraged Ellen to sculpt.
“He’s the one who got me to start sculpting,” Ellen says. “It’s a very free way to express yourself.”
Her classes with Ian took place in Sedona, Ariz., where Cloud House Pottery began.
“The horses were watching us in the backyard. The whole atmosphere was great,” Ellen says.
Ian moved to Sedona to help his mom after his father died in 2006.
“Cloud House Pottery was born in Sedona, Arizona. It’s a very spiritual place,” Ian says. “We had a house up on a hill and the name Cloud House Pottery just fit together one day.”
In Sedona, Ian began experimenting with raku, pit and wood firings. And Ellen painted and sculpted.
Ian, who grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif., missed the beach desperately. One trip to Delray Beach was all it took for him to find a new home.
“I came down Atlantic Avenue and fell in love with the area and here we are,” Ian says.
They moved to Delray Beach in April 2011 and opened Cloud House Pottery in Artists Alley two months later. Ian says he enjoys being part of Artists Alley, which he calls “a little colony of artists.”
“We’re working together but we’re separate,” Ian says.
Inside Cloud House Pottery, Ian and Ellen collaborate and create their own art.
Ellen sculpts small and large pieces, including a series of faces, and is drawn to bright, vivid colors in her paintings. Some are colorful portraits of women and young children and others are more abstract.
“I’ve been trying to get more abstract in my work,” Ellen says. “The colors are very, very bright because it’s Florida and it’s happy.”
And Ian has been hooked on making pots since he was a teenager. He took a 45-minute ceramic class all four years at Laguna Beach High School.
“I would be the first one and the last one out,” Ian says. “I liked the feel of it. I would take something that was just a blob and turn it into something else. I learned most of the basics — centering, pulling and basic shaping.”
He would create whatever the assignment was, a mug, a bowl, a vase, and sometimes something else.
“Sometimes, you sit down to make something and the clay wants you to make something else. That’s key. You let the clay do what the clay wants to do,” Ian says.
Ian studied ceramic arts at several community colleges and at Northern Arizona University, and in workshops with well-known ceramists. And he pores over videos on YouTube for new techniques. He began offering one-on-one ceramic classes earlier this year.
“I do one-on-one instruction on the wheel for people who want to learn,” Ian says.
As for his art, each day is different from the last.
“Every day I come in here, I try something new.”
Cloud House Pottery is located at 354 N.E. 4th Street in Delray Beach. Call 862-9222 or visit cloudhousepottery.com for more information.