“It was an accident,” says Anne Currier, describing her start in ceramics. “But it was one of the better accidents. I like accidents because they change what would be a predictable route to take.” 

It was her freshman year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting class she wanted to take was full, so she enrolled in ceramics. Her connection with the process – “the physicality of it” – was immediate and powerful.

“I remember going home at night and having my shoulders ache because I couldn’t center,” she says. “And the day that the clay centered, it just resonated throughout my entire body.”

Currier, known today for her ceramic sculpture, went on to study under Patti Warashina – whom she counts among her heroes – at the University of Washington, earning an MFA in 1974. She taught at the University of Colorado Boulder before joining the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1985. Over the years, honors – including an NEA fellowship, a Virginia A. Groot Foundation grant, and teaching awards – have accumulated. (She describes this ACC award as “a wonderful surprise.”)

“The work is what kept me going, made me decide to stick with it,” she says. “There’s a facility now. I can think with the material. I can move with it.”