One thing is for sure about the area we live in: It’s got a lotta hills and valleys. Cheyenne Mallo Pottery celebrates those undulations in pottery traced with local topography, earning their studio a Chronogrammie in the Maker category.
A perfect souvenir of a favorite trail, or a memento of a happy occasion, Cheyenne Mallo and Zac Schiff’s pieces—from mugs to trays, utensil holders, and bowls, even tile-bearing Hudson River maps for kitchen backsplashes—feature wavy lines against a stark white background.
“I had previously used map imagery in my print work, but when I moved to the Hudson Valley and started hiking in the Catskills, I had one of those lightbulb moments one day when I realized that I could put a map of the hike I had just done onto one of my pots!,” Mallo says. “The first few maps I put on my pottery were of hikes that I had done myself, but, over time, our line has evolved to include hikes that neither of us have done yet, like some of the national parks. We think of those as our hiking bucket list!”
Mallo, originally from Wisconsin, was a printmaker until a 2011 move to the Hudson Valley changed her medium. “I found an amazing ceramics community through an internship at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale,” she says.
In 2018, Mallo faced a “massive” holiday ornament project when her partner Zac pitched in, according to Mallo. “From that point on, we’ve been working together full-time,” Mallo says. “Literally every piece of pottery that comes out of our studio has been worked on by both of us.”
A couple thousand pieces come out of the electric kiln each year, in a shed near the studio in Mallo and Schiff’s home in Olivebridge. Cheyenne Mallo Pottery welcomes commission requests, too. “It’s really cool seeing people valuing and using handmade objects instead of mass-produced goods,” Mallo says.
Cheyenne Mallo Pottery is available at various regional retailers as well as via Etsy.
This article appears in July 2023.
