Carol “Cricket” Edmonson is an artist and art educator currently teaching at Mainly Clay in Farmville. She received her degree in Art Education from Longwood in1982, and began a 35 year career teaching art in the public schools.

In 1997 she was selected to participate in the Inaugural Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program, visiting schools in Tokyo and Kyushu Prefecture. She is a recipient of the Award for Community Achievement in the Arts from the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts for her service in art education.

In addition to running Old Ridge Studios with her husband, Randy, she has exhibited her ceramics in numerous shows, galleries and at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Artist Statement

The Fulbright Teacher Program introduced me to Japanese schools as well as many cultural sites. Upon returning to my students I shared both techniques and insight into Japanese art and ideas.

Dr. Stephen Addiss, Asian scholar, and Hitomi and Takuro Shibata, ceramic artists, showed me the beauty and wabi-sabi aesthetic of Shigaraki pottery.

“In my own studio work I began to appreciate the rustic, earthy simplicity Shigaraki vessels reveal. My husband and I, along with a group of dedicated potters, built and fire the Old Ridge Anagama. Each firing creates unique surfaces on the many types of clay and forms in the week-long event. Upon close inspection, every piece is a lesson that makes us all look forward to our next creations.”