After receiving her master’s degree in ceramics from the University of Louisville in 1985, Lisa started her own pottery business, Highland Pottery, in the eclectic Highlands neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. Her work has been exhibited and sold at galleries and shops across the United States, as well as in many juried regional and national fine art shows. She has been a member of professional juried guilds, boards, and artist associations including the Foothills Craft Guild, the Kentucky Crafts Guild, The Kentucky Department of the Arts Marketing Program, Tennessee Craft, NCECA, The New Prospect Craft Center, The Knoxville Art Alliance, and Terra Madre: Women in Clay. In addition to being a full time studio potter, currently, Lisa is an adjunct instructor of art at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, where she teaches drawing and clay. In 2014, she restarted the clay program at Cleveland State Community College and taught wheel throwing, hand building and clay sculpture there through 2016. From 2005 until 2015, Lisa started and directed the Whittington Creek Art Show, which began as a small holiday art sale in her home and grew into an annual juried show featuring more than 30 artists, 17 corporate sponsors, an auction benefiting Alzheimer’s Tennessee, live music, art demonstrations, children’s art activities and contests, and cash prizes for best in show.
Some of Lisa’s most recent accomplishments include being a Master Artist in Tennessee Craft’s Master Artist Apprentice Program (MAAP), being the Artist Coordinator for the first annual Art Fair KMA at the Knoxville Museum of Art and winning a First Place Award of Distinction for her work at the 10th annual Gatlinburg Fine Arts Festival at Arrowmont. She has also been an invited juror for The Tennessee Craft Show in Centennial Park in Nashville, for the Foothills Craft Guild (the oldest juried guild in Tennessee), and for the Art Market Gallery. For seven years she served as the scheduler for The Art Market Gallery, an artists’ cooperative gallery in downtown Knoxville with over 60 members. Her work is currently on display at Roots Up Gallery in Savannah, Georgia and The Art Market Gallery and the District Gallery in Knoxville, Tennessee, and in other juried national shows around the country, most recently including The Companion Gallery (Humboldt, Tennessee), Gallery Zeke (Steelville, Missouri) and The Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery (Tieton, Washington). In 2013, the District Gallery hosted Lisa’s retrospective show to benefit Alzheimer’s Tennessee. The show, “36 Years in Clay: A Retrospective and Benefit for Alzheimer’s Disease,” was covered by local news outlets including the Knoxville News Sentinel, WBIR, and the Metro Pulse.
In addition to teaching college students, her other occupations have included graphic artist, elementary and middle school art teacher, art show director and mother of three children. For more information about her work and shows visit her website at LisaKurtzHighlandPottery.com and LisaKurtzHighlandPottery.weebly.com
