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Jim and Linda Winegar

Specialty: Clay

Our main interest lies in creating functional pottery, those items that people find useful, and hopefully precious, in their daily lives. Both of us are involved in every aspect of the process, from forming, to glazing, to firing kilns. Most of our stoneware is created on the potter’s wheel. Many pieces are embossed or hand-carved, sometimes with enhancements of hand-formed leaves and acorns, reflective of the beautiful rural setting of our home and studio. We’ve developed a unique palette of glaze colors & textures and love the effects of layering them. We take great joy in creating our one-of-a-kind “spirit jars,” with the addition of semi-precious gemstones. Much love and attention to detail goes into each and every piece. We continue to be excited by new directions we discover in working with this versatile material.

Jim and Linda’s Biography

Jim & Linda Winegar have been creating with clay for more than 50 years. They met in the pottery studio at Indiana University of Pennsylvania back in the late ’60s, learning all about clay under Professor Frank Ross. After receiving their degrees in Art Education, they spent two summers as teaching assistants at Hinckley School of Crafts in Maine. This eventually brought them to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they spent 14 years creating their pottery and establishing a gallery (1974), which later became the Prints and the Potter Gallery, where you can still find their work today. In 1987, they moved back to Southwestern PA and set up their Winegar Pottery studio on a beautiful 60 acre property. Their studio is located in an 1880s barn, with an additional building for the kilns. For more than 20 years they marketed their pottery through shops and galleries throughout the US. As markets changed over the years, they turned more toward marketing their work through a variety of arts and music festivals and other exhibits. They enjoy meeting people and talking with customers about their work. Through the years, their many teaching experiences have included elementary & high school art, university ceramics programs, adult education classes and artist-in-residence programs. For more than 5 years, they owned and operated a fine art & crafts gallery, Artbeat, representing more than 80 artists and craftsmen. In addition to their claywork, they spent 25 years deeply involved with Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem-solving program for students and for the past 17 years, have served on the board of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards of Southwestern PA (celebrating the creative efforts of student artists and writers).