About

Joanna Bloom is an artist who works primarily with clay. She grew up in Lyme, Connecticut, a place that remains deeply influential to her work. Her family home, a collage of structures built off the bones of a depression-era log cabin, was situated in a rich woodland landscape of endless trails, granite boulders and streams. Her family, mostly artists, provided an environment around food, making and music that is forged into her deepest memories.

Bloom eventually moved to the Pacific Northwest, having found there a mirror to the richness of her childhood. It was along the way, living in the American Southwest and visiting the pottery villages of Mexico, that she became drawn to the culture of clay, and soon after, a love of its spontaneous qualities as a material.

Nearly thirty years later, Bloom’s explorations with the material rarely veer far from the vessel and its endlessly mineable parallels to landscape, the body, and the human experience. The resulting sculptural works pay homage to the rich history of self-taught art, material culture, family relationships, and the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where the artist lives and works.

Bloom holds a MA in Education from the Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, and a BA from Connecticut College, New London, CT. Her work has been exhibited at Friends Artspace, Arlington, VA, Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR, the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA; Grants Pass Museum, Grants Pass, OR; Kellogg University Art Gallery, Cal Poly, Pomona, CA; Hoffman Gallery, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Portland, OR; and the New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art, New Orleans, LA, among others. Bloom’s work is included in the collections of the Portland Art Museum and The Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Pacific Northwest College of Art, both in Portland, OR. In 2012, Bloom co-founded Ash Street Project, a space for mentorship and creative cross-pollination in the ceramic arts, in Portland, OR, which closed in 2020. She currently lives and works in Portland, OR.