SAFFORDVILLE — Dale Hartley’s imagination must be turned on day and night.
Some results of her imaginings and experimenting, combined with her artistic talent, are on display for the remainder of this week at the Emporia Arts Council.
Her work has been sold at galleries from Emporia to Cottonwood Falls to Denver, and soon will be exhibited at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 12345 College Blvd. in Overland Park.
Hartley creates art in pottery, stoneware, and multi-media paintings. She may have gotten some of her techniques from classes and workshops and some from her own inner, muse, but she credits her mother, also an artist and teacher, for showing her that art is guided by the imagination, not by rules.
“She always said you can do anything with anything,” Hartley said. “You just have to be flexible enough and go with the flow.”
Hartley took classes from local artist Rex Hall when she was earning a master’s degree from Emporia State University, and has completed a number of workshops that further developed her skill and imagination.
She operates an on-site clay mixer to create clays to the consistency and content she prefers. Her recipes include alumina, kaolin (clay), and glass, or silica. The clays themselves may be white, or a light brown stoneware clay, to a darker, denser terra cotta.
She has drawers full of tools and unique accessories to “knit” together with traditional wheel and handbuilt techniques.
Her pieces reveal an interesting range of textures. She may use an oversized rolling pin to flatten the clay before she begins working it, or may place a strip of eyelet lace over the clay and roll it until the pattern is embedded.
An unusual gridded pattern in a large vase sitting on a shelf in her studio on Monday came from rolling a vehicle floor mat over the clay.
“That’s one thing about clay,” she said. “It will pick up the texture of anything from a shoeprint to lace.”
Hartley often combines thrown clay with handbuilt clay to translate her visions into reality.
“Some of my pieces are functional, and some of them aren’t,” she said.
Many of her pieces have a matte surface with a glaze that is almost too subtle to be seen. Some of the glazes are tinged with color, while color in other pieces may come from gritty sand collected from around the country. She also uses touches of cobalt or iron oxide or other natural colors to achieve the desired effect.
“Mostly it’s from the firing, and I make my own glazes that have colors in them,” she said.
“I work with the fire to get certain effects. It’s never-ending possibilities. You can use your imagination and really do a lot of things. ... There’s just all kinds of techniques you can learn.”
She used a large fluted lampshade to guide the base shape of one of her large vases; she added an antique-looking crackle glaze to a distinctly modern-looking asymmetrical plate accented with muted colors. Her studio is ringed with shelves holding unusually shaped pitchers, bowls, vases and other art pieces.
Outside the studio adjacent to the home she shares with husband Evan, she has two kilns and a clay mixer. One kiln is for creating raku, a Japanese pottery process that culminates in smoking the pieces in a reducing chamber fueled by sawdust or hay. Raku-firing produces pieces touched with dark colors and some iridescence, she said.
Hartley uses specially made gloves and exceptionally long tongs to handle the pottery coming from the raku kiln, which like the other kiln is heated to 2,000 to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. She handles the pieces carefully enough to avoid burns, usually, but sometimes flirts with danger because of her own curiosity.
“I singed my hair the other day, my bangs,” Hartley said. “That’s from looking in too often.”
Hartley also makes her own large pottery tiles, slightly and intentionally irregular and occasionally looking a little warped. On those, she cuts in lines or shapes into abstract designs, or she paints on whatever scenes come to mind.
The painting is something she took up in 1995. Her interest in that has intensified since she joined the Plein Air artists who come together in Chase County annually to paint outdoors in the natural light.
Remembering the advice of her mother, Hartley uses oil, watercolors, pastels and other media in her multi-media work. A collection of those paintings, too, are on display at the EAC through Friday.
Hartley also gives tours of her studio by appointment. Arrangements can be made by calling her at 620-279-4543.