JANIE GOULD

For more than four decades, Glenda Taylor of Vero Beach has been taking lumps of clay and turning them into incredibly beautiful and inventive works of art.

She is a potter, a ceramics artist who takes her inspiration from sea life in the Florida Keys and Caribbean as well as from the classic lines of Greek and Minoan forms that she studied in art history.

But like Thomas Edison, who famously is reported to have said that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, Taylor says she learns best just by getting her hands dirty. If she’s not particularly inspired, she heads to her studio anyway and calls it her “make an ugly pot day.”

“The best thing is to have a great idea,” she said. “I always have ideas. Some of them aren’t that great. If I sit around at home and wait for inspiration to come, it really does not come, so I am kind of sequestered here.”

That means she works nearly every day at Tiger Lily Gallery, the artists cooperative on 14^th Avenue that she helped establish more than 20 years ago. It’s become the nucleus of Vero’s downtown arts district, which now boasts nearly two dozen galleries and design shops.

Taylor says she’s really not influenced by the work of other artists, because she spends her time concentrating on her own work.

“I’m always working,” she said. “I don’t travel much except to see coral reefs for inspiration. My work kind of feeds itself. I can’t tell you of any outside influences that exist.”

She has an electric wheel in her studio where she “throws” a pot, fashioning clay moistened with water into the shape she wants. It’s like making a “pinch pot” before electric wheels came into vogue. The artist turned the pot while pinching the clay evenly all around. To on observer, it’s reminiscent of a pie crust with a fluted edge made by the baker’s thumbprint.

“Now the wheel does that for you,” she said. “Your job is to keep your hands steady, use the right amount of pressure with the right amount of water, to get the form that you want.”

“When you throw a pot you make it with a single lump of clay,” she said. “Clay is a fascinating medium, because basically it is dirt. It’s from the earth like dirt is. What got me most interested in clay wasn’t the clay itself but the glaze, the glass surface.”

Taylor spends most of her time applying colored glaze and underglaze, basically powdered glass, to her pieces, which makes the finished products so special. Using a mechanical pencil, she sketches the design on paper. Once the clay piece is as dry as hard leather, she uses tiny brushes to apply as many as two dozen different shades of glaze. Some sections to be daubed with glaze aren’t much bigger than a pin head.

“My work has gotten a lot more image focused, so I am learning how to paint,” she said.

A navy blue and white earthenware lidded vase she’s showing at Tiger Lily has several layers of glaze depicting fish shells, starfish, pieces of coral reef and other natural treasures of the seas. Another piece is a glass-top coffee table anchored by sculptures of sea life, from angel fish to elkhorn coral. A “turtle swim bowl,” glazed in shades of grey green, also reflects her love for snorkeling and diving. It depicts three loggerhead turtles.

“I love seeing them,” she said. “They’re very curious and not afraid of divers.”

A fourth generation Florida native, Taylor grew up in Jacksonville in a family of scientists and engineers.

“I always loved making things as a child, but art was not at all a part of our family,” she said. “Everything was explained to me in black and white terms.”

She studied computer science at the University of Georgia for two years, but when she realized that wasn’t her calling, spent some time in the mountains of western North Carolina, where potters flourish as abundantly as dogwood in the spring. Then she enrolled at the University of Florida and earned a bachelor of fine arts in ceramics in 1977. The program was fairly new and was equipped with kickwheels, which had a flywheel at the base that student potters kicked with their leg to keep rotating.

“Basically, I’m self-taught,” she said.

Taylor and her husband, Ric, a builder, moved to Vero Beach in 1980. They have two sons, now grown. She established the ceramics program at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, equipped it and taught ceramics for 15 years.

Now her focus is on commission work.

“People come to me with ideas about urns they want, sinks they want, just pieces of art they want,” she said. “I really enjoy working with people on projects that are meaningful to them. A lot of times it’s for people who are redecorating and can’t find the perfect piece.”

Taylor has a show that opened recently at the Cheryl Newby Gallery in Pawleys Island, S.C., near Charleston. Her work is included in numerous distinguished collections, including the White House. These days, she’s busy designing centerpieces for son Eric’s January wedding at Waldo’s Secret Garden in Vero Beach.

She is sure she has made thousands of pots over the years, but has kept virtually none of them.

“Everybody asks me, isn’t it hard to sell your work,” she said. “The truth is my joy is in the making of it and then I’m so excited about what I want to make next. It’s terrible. I’ve sold everything. It’s really true. I’m excited about what I’m making now.”