Mississippi Mud’s artisans are skilled in pottery, glass, fiber, wood, jewelry, and metal among others. This page gives you a taste of what we have to offer, but of course we have many smaller collections, as well as one-of-a-kind products we are unable to feature on the site.
Be sure to stop in to see the gallery's newest artists Carla Duncan and Ardie Trost - Jewelry Metal Smiths and Kymm Hughs of Praire Art Glass - Jewelry and Fused Glass Ornaments.
Pottery - The gallery currently features four different potters – all with a unique style and form.
Precious Pots: Bari Precious, born and raised in Canada, has called Springfield, Missouri home for the last 25 years. With a BFA in ceramics from Southwest Missouri State University, Bari has traveled the world gaining inspiration and techniques from Iran to China. Precious Pots can only be found in a select handful of galleries in Missouri.
Sunfire Pottery: Clarksville, Missouri potter Amanda Moon creates unique, handmade pottery from the potter's wheel. Mississippi Mud features her functional pots, plates, dishes, wine coolers, etc. in cobalt blue and terracotta.
Ken Russell: Out of Clarksville, Missouri, Ken’s pots are entirely handmade from native Missouri stoneware clays taken from the local Mississippi River banks. He uses only a potter’s wheel and rudimentary tools, no molds, casts, presses or jiggers are used to make his fine pottery. Additionally, each piece is high-fired stoneware that makes the piece perfect for daily use.
The Great River Road Pottery: Artist Erin Garrison, works from her studio in Missouri’s historic river town, Clarksville. She creates unique stoneware pottery, specializing in original wild flower design brushwork on an eggshell colored clay body. Her collection includes a complete line of oven and table ware, a variety of decorative, functional oil lamps and, for the garden enthusiast, bird feeders, with each piece wheel-thrown or hand-built by the artist.
Glass - Mississippi mud features 3 glass artists from the Midwest.
Riverside Studio Blown Glass by Kenneth Marine: Kenneth was en-route to California from his home in South Carolina when he was offered a job as a glassblower's apprentice in the Missouri Ozarks in 1986. Seventeen years later, his fascination with hot glass continues to grow. Created in his studio in Hollister, Missouri, Kenneth's glass is sold in more than 100 galleries and gift shops— from Alaska to Hawaii, California to Maine, and Washington to the Virgin Islands.
Rick Garnett Glass Handblown glass artist Rick Garnett operates out of his studio in Hutchinson Kansas. Rick is well know for his dichroic glass freeform sculptures, glass fish and sea creatures.
Graces Shea Design: Lisa Barnhart is a native of Missouri who, from an early age, has held a passion for the arts. Nearly a decade ago she began working in stained glass while spending her summers in Alaska and her winters attending various art courses throughout the U.S. In 2000 she found herself settled back in St. Louis designing unique glass creations full time. Mississippi Mud carries Lisa’s fused glass wall pockets, sun catchers and light pulls.
Fiber - Mississippi Mud carries a varied assortment of fiber goods – from vintage quilted pillows to handmade baskets and paper lamps.
Bear Creek Paper Lamps: Leandra Spangler’s passion for papermaking began in 1986 when she first plunged her hands into a vat of pulp. In the subsequent years, she has explored numerous ways of making and using paper as a medium in her creative artistic expressions. After twenty five years of teaching art in the public schools, Leandra became a full-time studio artist in June, 2000. She lives in the house she grew up in Columbia, Missouri with her husband and their happy kitties.
The Spoke ‘N’ Reed: Husband and wife team, Bill and JoAnn Hemple, weave their traditional baskets out of St. Louis.
Circle of Life Baskets: Ann McGinty, living in Columbia, Missouri, creates organic shaped baskets out of natural materials such as reeds and sea grass.
Cindy Freeland: With vintage quilts as her medium, Cindy creates one-of-a-kind throw pillows. Her pillows vary in size and shape, but the understated elegance is undeniable.
Newberry Furniture: Missourians, Bill and Julie Newbery, began their studio, Newberry Furniture 10 years ago. The husband/wife studio has recently been juried into Best of Missouri Hands. Mississippi Mud is proud to feature the Newberry’s beautifully crafted cutting boards.
Jewelry - In addition to our selection of fun and trendy costume jewelry, Mississippi Mud features handcrafted art to wear by several local artists. Here are a few of our favorites.
Stranded Glass by Gail Crozier: Stranded, is Missourian Gail’s line of beautifully handmade glass bead jewelry. Working with hot, molten glass to combine beautiful colors into small creations, Gail’s fascination has developed into an obsession. The lampworked glass beads are made by melting the end of a glass rod in a torch and winding the molten glass around a wire called a mandrel. Gail then decorates the basic bead with numerous techniques, ranging from the simple to the extremely complicated. Having learned from such renowned bead artists as, Patty Walton, Jim Smirich, and Kate Fowle, Gail creates breathtaking pieces.
Nena Galloway Potts, a Missouri born artist, is a professional jewelry designer and metal smith since 1978. Nena's work is as diverse as the materials that she chooses to use in her unique and wearable jewelry. Nena uses gold, silver, brass, bronze, copper, and niobium along with precious stones and sometimes not so precious materials. Of course not all of these materials are used in one design, but each work is created with the utmost attention to the inherent characteristics of the materials chosen.
Dzignz on You: As a metal smith, Lee Richards, of Union, Missouri, finds herself drawn to shapes, forms and textures with most of his pieces using a variety of elements and texture. Glass against metal, metal against shell, Richards likes the idea that you need to reach out and touch it to completely "experience" a piece. Wearable art is truly an experience to be touched and not just seen. Richard’s line, Dzignz on You, is exclusively offered at a dozen galleries in Missouri and Indiana.
DragonFly Kiln Works: Connie Thatcher, an artist living in House Springs, Missouri, has been working with glass since 1991. She began with stained glass, creating custom stained glass windows for St. Louis homes and businesses. However, in 1996 she started reading about fused glass - glass heated and manipulated in a glass kiln. Since then she has forgone the traditional stained glass work for the beautiful dichroic glass pieces she now merges with silver to create amazing wearable art.
Metal - In addition to the metal smith’s featured above in the jewelry section, Mississippi Mud has Garden Deva, Lisa Regan out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and has recently added Texan artist Curtis Kroesche of The Lone Kro’.
Garden Deva: Lisa Regan creates one-of-a-kind steel sculptures for the yard and garden, as well as smaller more functional versions for the indoors. Since 1991 Lisa has been hand-cutting each piece of recycled steel with a plasma torch ensuring the uniqueness of each design.
The Lone Kro’: Kroesche’s metal art is created through a process of grinding, applying heat and hand finishing, with the end product being a beautiful piece full of unique colorations and characteristics.
Gary Lucy Prints and Note cards: Gary R. Lucy recently completed his 33rd year as a professional artist. In the down-home style of two other past Missouri masters, George Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton, Lucy's art is at once both simple and profound. His colorful canvases of 19th century life on America's Inland Waterways continue to win him an ever-increasing number of fans. Gary resides in Washington, Missouri with his wife, Sandy.
