Susan Folwell is one of the exciting innovators in Pueblo pottery.  This new tile is part of her current series, “Roads Well Traveled: Route 66“.  This piece is entitled “Head out on the Highway“.  The tile is made from micaceous clay.   Susan created an edge to the tile with texture to look as if it was hardened mud on the highway. The front is painted with a classic “Route 66” gas station tank, with the road extending through the desert.  The piece has subtle coloration as Susan said, “so that it was more like a memory than the retail thing”.  The tile is signed, “Folwell” on the license plate of the car!

Susan says of this series:

“I’ve been taking trips and traveling along Route 66 in Arizona and New Mexico since I was a kid.  There is so much to see, interpret, and wonder about that past!  Much of the area lends itself to my natural interest in the obscure and unusual.  Neon signs from half a century ago still serve a purpose and are still in working order.  Curio shops are all along the route with enough to feed my imagination for weeks.  It history and reflection, a strange reflection of where we were as a country and a nostalgia that seems to continue to push through the cracks of time.  Honstely, it’s a walk down memory lane and there isn’t much about it, no matter how weird or unexpected, that just doesn’t make me want to smile.  I like that.”