Sandy Simon

American, b. 1949

In the late 1960s, Simon was a student at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and studied under Warren MacKenzie and Curt Hoard. Afterward, she and her husband, Michael Simon, earned a living making pottery in Atlanta for seven years. She then got a teaching job at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but also filled in for sabbatical vacancies at Purdue, Indiana University, the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Tennessee, and San Francisco State University. In 1980, she moved to California with her second husband, Robert Brady. They bought Peter Voulkos’s huge Berkeley warehouse building in 1986 for studio space, and in 1994 she started TRAX Gallery to showcase work from functional potters she admires.