Born in 1925 in New York, Karen Karnes was at the pinnacle of the studio pottery movement for over 60 years. Karnes’ ceramics move deftly between functional and abstract forms, equally intriguing and inviting in both modes. She attended Brooklyn College before studying ceramics in Sesto Fiorentino, Italy, and at Alfred University (1952). She then studied for two years at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, creating work alongside Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Peter Voulkos. After cultivating her craft in North Carolina, she founded a studio in Stony Point, New York, in 1954, where she worked for 25 years. Her work is represented in numerous museum collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her work is the subject of a new publication and retrospective, A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes, which will travel to five museums across the United States. Karen Karnes died on July 12, 2016, at her home in Morgan, Vermont. She received the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal in 1998.