About Susan Troy Design

I grew up in Berkeley, California in the 1950's and 60's dreaming about one day becoming an artist and teacher. Then along came college and I decided painting flowers and teaching had to take a back seat to social change. I transferred from Humboldt State to UC Berkeley and graduated in 1973 with an Individual Major in "Creative Politics." I got my first full-time job at the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley in 1975 where I worked as an administrative assistant/adviser for two newly-hatched individual major programs--Development Studies and Political Economy of Industrial Societies. 

THEN ALONG CAME CLAY... I was first introduced to clay by a colleague who took me to the ASUC Studio on my lunch hour. It was there, in those stolen moments between students and bureaucracy that I first learned to center and throw a bowl. Love blossomed and I dreamed of pursuing this new passion full time. Alas, it was not to be! I found myself pregnant and for the next six years brought forth human, not ceramic vessels.

Fast forward sixteen years. My advising career was now a thing of the past and my children were becoming teenagers. To save my sanity, I took a ceramics course at Studio One. It was like returning to an abandoned love affair, one which I never wanted to leave again. I moved to the Potter's Studio in Berkeley in order to learn as much as I could about ceramics. I also began studying painting where I tackled the difficult task of translating painting on paper to painting underglazes on clay. In 2006, I was able to develop a studio in my home and purchase a kiln. In 2011 I started studying sculpture and art at Laney and Merritt Colleges. During the summer of 2013, I moved a potter's wheel up to the boat house in Montana thus completing my dream of having a studio on Hebgen Lake.

At about the same time I first resumed my studies at Studio One, I was encouraged to develop my own program teaching ceramics to children at a local after school program. I currently teach two sessions of ceramics there a year. After almost sixteen years teaching, this continues to be a challenging, joyous, and rewarding adventure. 

So, in the curious and circuitous way life has of working itself out, I have now become that which I first dreamt of becoming---an artist and a teacher. I hope you enjoy my story and my work.