2022 Speaker Profile: Frances Palmer

Meet Frances Palmer, a renowned potter, gardener, photographer, cook, and beekeeper. Contributor Jo Ellen Meyers-Sharp recently profiled Frances for this Slow Flowers Summit feature.

Frances Palmer (c) Jane Beiles

Every day a blank canvas awaits celebrated potter Frances Palmer. The muses of her work include the potting studio, three pottery wheels, four kilns, a camera and tripod, windows that allow natural light to flood the space, and two cut flower gardens established just steps outside the door. The pottery, flowers, and the resulting images demand concentration and intentional creation to ensure the elements compliment and complement each other. It’s an environment constructed to nourish her creativity.

Frances creates and shares her art through her photography, which depicts tables set for intimate meals, studio vignettes and commissions for collectors and galleries. Her integrated practice has resulted in Frances Palmer Life in the Studio, published in 2020 by Artisan, a division of Workman Publishing. In the book she captures how her life is filled with purposeful and intentional activities that come together as a whole in her creations of functional pottery, flowers, photography, and food.