By Efrat Koppel | Photograph by Andy Goodwin
Inside a former Rock Springs schoolhouse is a small room lined with fiberglass panels. There are no windows, just a glass door. Flip the light switch and you see that the only items in there are a humidifier and speaker on the ground; an ergonomic chair; and a working surface covered with small piles of empty, upturned yogurt and sour cream containers. It’s unassuming, and the eye of a regular person might not catch the containers as anything besides clutter. With a steady hand, Sandra Byers lifts the containers. Like crabs under rocks at the seashore, one by one, small, delicate creatures are unearthed.
This is the damp room, the center of Sandra’s practice for decades now. The damp room, co-conceptualized by her husband, Win, elongates the time Sandra can spend forming and carving these whimsical forms made of incredibly thin porcelain. Curving and curious, each sculpture feels simultaneously like a being and a world. Holding any one of the forms in your palm, awe and protectiveness emerge. This is a great love of Sandra, who has built her life around crafting precious and thought-provoking pieces.
The damp room is at the heart of the expansive brick school building Sandra and Win Byers purchased in 1980 to house the totality of their creative process. The purchase sits at a juncture in the turning of their story. The two met as high school students, and Win followed Sandra to Cornell University. Sandra found pottery after choosing ceramics to fulfill an elective in her soon-abandoned fashion degree. Initially spending time in the potter’s studio to be around Sandra, Win found throwing on the wheel “almost meditative” from day one, and his instructor required him to sign up for an independent study because he spent so much time there. Just as Sandra did, Win quickly fell in love with clay.
The couple married and moved to the Madison area so Win could attend graduate school for economics. It didn’t take long for Win to drop out. Win says, “Sandy was having more fun than I was.” They took a leap of faith to practice pottery professionally for a year. Among other things, the two began creating pie plates together for wholesale: Win throwing plates with beautiful ridges and small loops for hanging, and Sandra decorating with blue inky glaze. Through collaborating on functional and commercial work, they found success. Years later, wanting a place they could live, craft, and fire their pottery, they moved to their forever home, resting on a ridge in Rock Springs along the Baraboo River.
Photograph provided by Sandra & Win Byers
Photograph by Andy Goodwin
I had the pleasure of seeing the Byers’ works on a green May day. Win’s work varies in scale—bowls, crocks, vases—but his most dramatic work lives through his platters. Seeing them in person, you’re struck with how alive they feel. The Byers bring me to a room on the ground floor housing Win’s largest platters. Pulling away protective foam, Win shows a large charcoal platter with a red center. Grounded and captivating, the piece has its own gravity. It feels like it’s vibrating, which is only right. When Win talks about color, he talks only about moving, dynamic landscapes. “There’s something lovely about looking at the hills this time of year,” he says. “It’s not solid dark green; it’s trees budding out. So with the platters, there’s a certain amount of reserved dignity. I will use color, strong color, but subdue it so people can live with the work, so that it can maybe create serenity.” The multi-layered glazing technique centers on ash to move the glaze on the uppermost layer to concentrate and move. From holding his spray gun at specific angles to create concentration areas and to strategic layering to create depth and variation, Win cultivates visual landscapes that are dimensional, steady, and full of health.
That movement and texture is fundamental to Win’s aesthetic values. Asking him about “lichen on granite,” a phrase he’s woven into the language of his work, he says, “There’s something calming about breaking up solid fields to color.” Here, I see the shared, though tacit, language of Sandra and Win. Both of their artistic visions share a spiritual core: a value of ecosystems of health. Reminiscent of the nature we know and worlds beyond our own, Sandra’s pieces seem to exist where all kinds of organic life can develop and flourish. “I’m trying to capture spirits and make people think about that,” she says. Likewise, Win’s color ecosystems are full of life and symbiosis.
Win’s heart lives at both ends of that spectrum of size. One thing he holds close is when people use his pottery in their daily lives. “I love it when people come back and tell me that they use the work,” he says. “That it’s part of their lives, that it’s a link, that somehow I’ve done something that enhances somebody else’s life.”
The sentiment lives in Sandra too. She tells me about a collector who told her getting that curve just right makes her world better. Sandra says, “I feel great when people say, ‘I don’t pass that piece without it bringing a smile to my face.’” Both of the Byers know the great gift and privilege it is to have spent half a century doing exactly what they love every day. That’s intrinsically worthwhile, but the element that really moves them is the integration of their pieces into people’s everyday experiences and the meaning and joy their work brings.
Connection has driven Sandra and Win throughout their artistic practices for years. Particularly now, it’s community, not completely financial need, that pulls the two to drive across the country to various art shows throughout the year. The shows are prestigious, ranging from the Smithsonian Craft Show to the Minnesota Potters/St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour to the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, where Sandra won “Best in Clay” this year. They see customers who have become collectors and friends, taking time to visit with them after the show, as Sandra says, “finding fossils and seeing herons.” Long-time collectors bring Sandra found treasures that remind them of her art and its universe. It delights her knowing she and viewers share an understanding.
What’s transpired over years has been a sense of pride, belonging, and friendship. “I feel like we’re in great company,” says Win. “It’s a privilege to be a part of that. … This is the best work being done in our field today.”
In addition to providing connection, the interactions motivate. Sandra says, “I think it’s more fun to keep evolving, and my customers and collectors absolutely expect it.”
Photograph provided by Sandra & Win Byers
Shows are one of the domains where the two support each other. When one is featured, the other helps with setup and can cover the booth for breaks because they know each other’s work so deeply. Beyond touring, they critique each other’s work with positivity. They learn technique from each other. Sandra has adopted Win’s spraying glaze technique for her colored work, and Win has learned from the way Sandra allows glazes to interact. All photography these days is meticulously designed by Sandra, who creatively directs, stages, and shoots their images because of her clear sight on their work.
Then there’s the quiet support of the day to day, of loving someone for a very long time. One takes care of a task so the other can have time in the studio. Win got an ergonomic chair for Sandra, so she can work more comfortably in the damp room. This is the real meat of their support for each other. A life woven around a mutual love.
Win offers to shape a piece for me so I can see him throw at the wheel. I watch him, bent over, his hands wet with slip. Holding his fingers pulling the clay, he says, “This is not at all abrasive to the hand, even though there’s coarse material in there.” Earlier, he mentioned preferring throwing to glazing. When I asked why, he said “I don’t know. Something about it may be sensual. It’s just a rhythm that makes sense.” There’s something I can’t get over here, something striking about spending half a century, hours a day, bent over mud in reverence and sharing that enrapturement with someone you love. Their studio is vast with high ceilings. It looks like it could have been a few connected classrooms or a cafeteria in its previous life. Yet the two of them sit close, their wheels a handful of steps away from one another.
Efrat Koppel is an arts writer and lifelong arts lover and practitioner. Efrat writes about local artists, creative process, and the role of place in shaping artistic identity. When not writing, Efrat is involved with Dane County Food Collective, supporting food systems and community resilience in southern Wisconsin.
Sandra and Win’s work can be found online or seen in person at their home during the Fall Art Tour, October 17–19.
Their studio can also be visited with advance arrangement.