About Janet McGregor Dunn.

I love having my hands in clay (that's actually paint on my hands in the photo, but I didn't have one with clay). I love experimenting with glazes. I often put myself to sleep at night creating pieces in my mind. I live to get into the studio. I love exploring all the combinations of textures when creating many of my original pieces. Yes, there is a lot I like and love about pottery and clay!

I was a painter (oil, acrylics, watercolor) for many years, but once I found clay I knew I'd found my home-corner in the world of creativity. Occasionally I'll still dabble with my paints but not for long as clay always pulls me back.

Music is an integral part of my life and many pieces are created with a musical theme in mind. Just like my art, my musical tastes are eclectic. You'll see musical flavors and themes in a lot of my pieces. Sometimes it's the blues, sometimes jazz, hard rock, classical, country...it just depends on my mood.

I am also inspired by nature and incorporate a lot of it into the design of my art pieces. My studio sits in the midst of a large wooded area. I often see deer, chipmunks, hummingbirds, and other wildlife through my studio windows. Wild turkeys sometimes perch on my front porch. I have bird and hummingbird feeders all around the studio to attract wildlife. I often add found objects from the surrounding area into sun catchers and other works.

All of the art pottery or sculpture I create are unique, never to be repeated. Even my smaller pieces are one-of-a-kind. I am not a fan of symmetry. I strive to create interesting shapes that change as you move around them, that cause the eye to travel.

If you'd like to read more keep scanning down the page for my much longer, bio.

You'll also find my art at:

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BIO

While Janet McGregor Dunn has been dabbling with art since she could first hold a crayon, her first forays into the art-sales world began with a paintbrush in hand. However, once she was introduced to clay at a friend’s studio, she knew she’d found her true niche.

She began her clay journey using a kick wheel then moved to the electric wheel. Somehow, sitting still at a wheel didn’t quite fit her always-on-the-move personality. Once she moved into hand building she never looked back. She often quips that her wheel is similar to that rarely used piece of exercise equipment many use to hang clothing on -- she frequently uses her wheel to hold boxes.

McGregor Dunn combines her love of nature, music and color in each piece of pottery. If you took a peek through the window of her studio you might find her dancing to a tune as she worked on her latest piece of pottery. Most of her pieces are hand-formed and all are one-of-a-kind, never to be repeated. She brings the outdoors into some of her work, using straw, rocks, plants or other found objects from the woods surrounding her studio.

The initial creation of a piece might take days. After finishing a piece it dries for a week or two, then is fired in an electric kiln for around 12 – 14 hours. It then sits and cools for roughly three days. After it is taken from the first kiln firing she glazes the pieces. All of her clay art, whether functional or decorative, has multiple glazes atop and many have added glass. Many pieces are glaze fired two to five or more times to give them depth and to build the layers of glaze and glass. Each glaze firing takes anywhere from five to seven hours, with up to two days of cooling time before being removed from the kiln.

She began selling her clay creations at art festivals and in various galleries about nine years ago. She has received numerous awards at shows through the years. In 2013 she participated in the first annual “Art Studio Tour” in Fayette County. The tour has continued to grow and was renamed the Southern Hands Artist Studio Tour (SHAST). In 2017 Janet began heading up the tour and expanded it to include artists in Coweta County.

McGregor Dunn is active in the community. She formed the south Atlanta art group Fine Arts And Crafts Entrepreneurs (FAACE) and continues to serve on the Board. The group is “all about the business of art” and was founded to assist artists in reaching their professional goals. FAACE hosts a number of art shows each year in the southern crescent area with The Magnolia Fine Art Festival as the main art festival, held in Peachtree City, GA.

She served on the Advisory Board for Georgia Lawyers for the Arts. She also served on the Board of the Clothes Less Traveled Thrift Shop, a non-profit which raises hundreds of thousands of dollars to support numerous worthy charities in the South Metro area. She also headed up the effort to gather artists to paint chairs for the successful Chair-ity Event to benefit The Children's Village at Christian City during its ten year run.

Additionally, in her “spare time”, she designs websites and manages social media for a variety of profit and non-profit groups. In her past life she managed bookstores, then moved into the corporate world working for the Federal Home Loan Bank. She left the Bank to start her own successful PR & Marketing company and started a number of on-line news sites – all of which she has put aside as her art career has blossomed.