Bill Gossman
Bill’s first experience with clay was when it squished through his toes at the creek near where he grew up in Rochester Minnesota. He has been working with clay professionally since the early 1970’s when he began working at a production pottery studio in Minneapolis. Bill studied with William Artis and James Tanner at Mankato State College in studio ceramics and glass after high school before launching his career as a potter. The first of his studios was in River Falls, Wisconsin, where he studied under Kurt Wild and Doug Johnson in ceramics and glass. In 1979 Bill traveled to Denmark to pursue his pottery career and was co-owner and operator of a small scale saw mill which eventually provided him with fuel for his first wood fired stoneware kiln. After a two year trip to Swaziland, Africa, where he continued to make wood fired stoneware using local materials, he returned to Denmark and built a new wood fired kiln. He made several improvements and built his fourth wood fueled kiln. In 1990 Bill returned to Minnesota with his family of four, a wife and two children, and constructed his next wood fueled kiln. He still fires his four chambered wood kiln and offers it as resource to regional potters and pottery enthusiasts to experience the wood firing experience once a year in April. In addition to being a full time potter he is also very active in his community of New London Minnesota
where he has been serving as Mayor since 2008. He says it has been fun and a great learning opportunity.