Rainy Bray-Hopwood
Meet the Artist
Rainy Bray-Hopwood
Bio
Rainy Bray-Hopwood (she/her/hers) is a potter, community organizer, and entrepreneur based in Bentonville, Arkansas. Her practice centers on ceramics as both a personal and communal medium. She makes functional and sculptural work rooted in the land and culture of the Ozarks. She is the founder of Fifth Street Studio, a ceramics and teaching studio in Bentonville, and co-founder of Five Glaze a ceramic glaze manufacturing company also based in NWA. Her practice has grown to include collaborative works, community events, and curatorial projects that bring together art, education and nature.
Artist Statement
I was born in the heart of the Ozarks, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, raised going to the river on weekends and catching fireflies until I was covered in chigger bites. The land shaped me before I ever had language for it.I work primarily in clay. It is a medium with deep roots in the earth and shaped by human hands across every culture and era. Through ceramics I explore the relationship between myself, and by extension my community, to the natural world. I am a member of the Choctaw Nation and the preservation of cultural heritage runs through the whole of my practice. In my work, the community is both a subject and collaborator. I believe art is most alive when it is made in relationship: to the land, to other people, to the traditions that came before us.
I was born in the heart of the Ozarks, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, raised going to the river on weekends and catching fireflies until I was covered in chigger bites. The land shaped me before I ever had language for it.I work primarily in clay. It is a medium with deep roots in the earth and shaped by human hands across every culture and era. Through ceramics I explore the relationship between myself, and by extension my community, to the natural world. I am a member of the Choctaw Nation and the preservation of cultural heritage runs through the whole of my practice. In my work, the community is both a subject and collaborator. I believe art is most alive when it is made in relationship: to the land, to other people, to the traditions that came before us.