Biography

Ingrid Melief is a Dutch-born ceramic artist producing wheel-thrown pottery for use and display. She has worked with clay for more than thirty years: initially with ceramic sculpture influenced by the Waldorf tradition in the Netherlands. She trained on the potter’s wheel while living in Chicago in the 1990s.

"I produce pottery that is at once functional, lightweight, and elegant. Many of my pots rest on a narrow base and open to enclose a wider space."

Ingrid's collections include a mix of finely glazed pottery alongside rougher pots, partly unglazed and sometimes altered. Influences here include her work in sculpture, as well as training in anthropology and a two-year period of residence (1990-92) with indigenous Aymara communities of the Bolivian highlands, where locally made unglazed ceramic cooking pots were in daily use.

Ingrid also has experience as a ceramics instructor: in local classrooms, with private students, and as an artist in residence at Generations of Hope, a foster community in Rantoul, IL. "As an instructor, I am exploring clay as a medium of individual and group therapy through wheelwork, hand building, and sculpture."

Ingrid currently works with porcelain and with different types of stoneware, oxidation fired to cone 6. Ingrid Melief's work is available through private sales, art fairs, gallery displays, holiday markets, and through this website.