Tip Toland

Tip Toland (Vaughn) is a ceramic artist whose work is subtly autobiographical: within a frozen moment, teeming with humanity, exists a vessel for her thoughts and feelings. She earned her BFA in ceramics at the University of Colorado and later received an MFA in ceramics from Montana State University. Her previous accolades include a Visual Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist-in-Residences in Wyoming, Oregon, Montana, and Washington, an Artist Trust GAP Award, and the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant, among others.

She is a full-time studio artist and a part-time instructor in the Seattle area. In addition, she conducts workshops across the United States. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries, including Nancy Margolis in New York City and Pacini-Lubel in Seattle. Her work is represented in both private and public collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian, Kohler Art Center, and a promised gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has an extensive list of solo exhibitions dating back to 1982 and is still doing shows here at Traver.

Tip also received a 2002 GAP Award.

As part of her Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Tip presented a talk on her work to a crowd of over 100 at the Bellevue Arts Museum in conjunction with her solo show, Melt, the Figure in Clay. Tip’s Fellowship gave her the confidence to give this advice to an aspiring sculptor: “If I can do it, you can do it… At times one wonders in the many months of making work in one’s basement alone, if this is nuts or not. My belief is that it is nuts and at the same time a calling. We all need a lot of encouragement and I am very grateful to Artist Trust for the encouragement this grant provided me.”