WORCESTER, MASS.- The journey of a mother and daughter can be filled with rebellion and many roadbumps along the way as well as overflowing with love and admiration. The latter is what we see in an exhibition on view at the Worcester Center for Crafts’ Krikorian Gallery. Two artists, who happen to be mother and daughter, are featured: Rosalie Olds and Claudia Olds Goldie. The exhibition A Mother Daughter Journey: Rosalie Olds & Claudia Olds Goldie will be on view through September 10, 2016. Both artists make ceramic sculpture and figures dominate their work.

There are 15 works by each artist in the show. Rosalie Olds, in her late eighties, is showing work from many periods of her life; Claudia Olds Goldie is showing more recent work.

“I found the Worcester Center for Craft and it changed my life,” said Rosalie. “I had always wanted to do sculpture and was a student with Leon Nigrosh, gradually working my way up.” Although she had no plans to become a teacher, Rosalie taught aspiring ceramicists for over 20 years at the Craft Center. She periodically still teaches private students and at the Willows where she currently resides.

“My mom— my mentor, teacher, friend, and cheerleader. She has been all these things to me throughout my life. We are creative souls, artists, easily distracted, quick to be wonderstruck, easily pulled into our own worlds of private imaginings, terrible at remembering names,” said Claudia. “For all these reasons, I have loved my mother and pushed mightily against her.” In 1978, however, securing her first teaching position, Claudia found herself needing to teach her mother’s artistic material— ceramics. Her mother coached her in her new job and slowly Claudia found she couldn’t escape the allure of clay.

“I was hooked,” Claudia reminisces. “With no formal education in ceramics other than the valuable tutelage of my mother, I began to experiment with techniques to create my own personal figurative style and alternative, non-glazed surfaces.”

Showing the two artists together gives the viewer an opportunity to explore influences but also to see how each artist’s own time is reflected in her work and the individual skills and techniques that give each work respectively its power. Speaking of Claudia in American Craft magazine, Holly Walker writes, “Goldie portrays mature women with candor.” Rosalie’s sculptures are figurative as well but often of animals as well as humans and the sculptures sometimes also function as vessels.

On the closing day of the exhibit, September 10 from 10am-5pm, Claudia Olds Goldie will present a Sculpture Demonstration Workshop at the Craft Center where she will demonstrate a variety of approaches to her process of creating a hollow built, standing ceramic figure and a proportional, expressive head. This workshop is by registration only. Registration can be done online at Worcestercraftcenter.org (class #171CW006A) or by phone, 508-753-8183 ext.301. Claudia Olds Goldie received her BFA from Boston University College of Visual Arts and teaches sculpture and ceramics at Dexter Southfield School in Brookline. Represented by Boston Sculptors Gallery, her awards include the Society of Arts and Crafts Artist Award and a Kiln God Residency from Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts. She has shown her work nationally. Her work can be seen in numerous publications including 500 Figures in Clay (2004) and 500 Figures in Clay 2 (2012) by Lark Books Publishing.