Sally Becker
Clay, Painting, Encaustic, Photography
Iron Blue Gully Art Studio
527 Plum Run Rd
New Oxford PA 17350
717-476-5069
https://beckersironblue.wixsite.com/sally-becker-artist
Sally Becker is a dual artist and art educator from Adams County Pennsylvania who works with drawing and painting media including encaustic, but has always had a love of clay. Her studio, the Iron Blue Gully Studio, is located by the small clay deposits she and her sister dug up to make “jewelry” when she was five years old. Her background in drawing developed while in high school under William D Davis. Her skills in ceramics developed at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she received, with honors, a BFA in Art Education. There she learned traditional Carolina firing methods such as salt firing in a ground hog kiln from the Seagrove area potters. She will admit that the excitement of fire and heat and its effects on clay never gets old for her.
Sally’s art teaching experiences include teaching pre-school students through high school students in North Carolina and in Pennsylvania. She taught art for over 20 years for the Littlestown Area School District at the elementary level and at the high school level. She received an MEd. in Teaching and Curriculum from Penn State University. She was awarded the Pennsylvania Elementary Art Educator of the Year from the PA Art Education Association and has created numerous art lessons and curricula throughout her years of teaching.
Now retired from full time teaching, Sally works in her own studio focusing on developing art inspired by the family farm where she still lives. The landscapes, wildlife, feathered or four-legged friends and the farm buildings that date back to the early 1800’s are embedded in her work. Her clay work is influenced by her drawing background and shows attention to detail, textural characteristics, and drawn images. She has developed a slip-trailed application of intuitive marks that is a signature characteristic of her thrown pieces. She is currently working on a series of cow sculptures based on her observations of the Black Angus herd that pastures on the farm.
Sally has experience as a juror for art exhibits and has illustrated a children’s book. Her exhibition record shows a mixture of drawing, painting, encaustic, and clay. Sally’s work has been exhibited in North Carolina and in Pennsylvania, including the Art of the State at the State Museum in Harrisburg, and in on-line exhibitions including the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society Fine Arts Gallery. She has participated in numerous members’ exhibits at the Adams County Arts Council and annually donates thrown stoneware bowls for South Central Pennsylvania’s Gleaning Project’s Empty Bowls soup dinner.
