Betty Woodman is an artist who is well known in the ceramic world, she has won multiple awards, and is known internationally. She was born in Connecticut and attended Alfred University.  In the 1950’s she began her career as a production potter, and she has exhibited in galleries like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has taught in the art department at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and is mostly known for her color palette and unique forms that she creates. She is considered a functional potter, and most of her work comes from an array of different cultural backgrounds, and interpretations of art history.

In the 1970’s she left the functional ceramic path, and started to go into the pattern and decoration movement, working with artists like Joyce Kozloff and Cynthia Carlson. She began creating more colorful and nonfunctional vessels that portray things like the Renaissance or landscapes with clouds. In the years before her death, in 2018, she increased her scale and environmental installations.

This piece that is shown has lovely hues of greens and blues that are apparent in the underglazes and glazes. She uses such unique surface design that make the piece look more three dimensional when the form could be something that is more in the 2 dimensional category. The bright yellows of the tile accent the darks blues throughout the piece quite nicely. You can see that in the pattern in the tile and how that ties into her work that she discovered in the 1970’s. The tile has a unique form that is common in Woodman work, and also the surface design that is something that has been radically part of her work probably since the 70’s. She has paved the way for ceramic artist and also female potters in the art world.