Open to Playfulness

Interview by Pam Parziale  

September 2025 

Denise Kupiszawski, The Mud Peddler   

Chickens scatter as I walk along the path to The Mud Peddlers Studio in nearby Shepherdstown. Once inside, a crow is on its back juggling a bevy of mice, brilliant blue horses appear, and green tree frogs leap across the artist’s worktable.  

The studio was once a horse barn and is now organized into a fantasy world for clay work. The worktable is surrounded by windows facing a small pasture. Four electric kilns used for cone 6 oxidation clay firing have their own stall. An adjoining stall is for glazing and is filled with multi-colored jars full of possibilities. Another stall is for tiles; works in progress line the walkway. In the field is a kiln for Raku. 

Thirty years ago, Denise left sunny SoCal behind and entered a new world, an altered state of playfulness using clay. “I’m doing this on my own terms; my evolution was like a floodgate opening. While we talked about the sparks she experiences with her hands in clay, she quoted Henri Matisse, “Look at life with the eyes of a child.” 

Denise explains, “When I am on the potter’s wheel, I want to alter the form. I resist the formality of form.” Her tileworks are not an ordinary flat surface, rather the shadows, the sgraffito, work to tell a different story. “Everything goes back to hand building. I want to work with my hands.” 

“I love introducing alien elements into the clay.” Looking at a Dodo bird with a dunce cap, she observes, “The Dodo needs one more thing, a globe at its feet.” She adds as way of explanation, “It is up to the viewer to make up the story.” She laughs at the possibilities of alternate images percolating up in someone’s mind. “It’s all about ridiculousness!” 

This year, however, the artist is open to new possibilities. It is about reverting back into the community of artists. Her tile work was on exhibit at the Shepherdstown Library this past July. She will be on the Over the Mountain Studio Tour at the studio of Rebecca Grace Jones the second weekend of November, most definitely a requisite studio for artful playfulness.