Liz Herlevsen
After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University with a BFA in design and metalworking, Ms. H focused on visual arts teaching in various environments, ranging from an inner-city public arts-magnet high school to a tiny little rural independent school. Always learning, she has further honed her art at Penland School of Craft, but more importantly grown as a teacher and artist through exploring varied experiences and relationships.
From being a graphic designer in corporate environments - Educational Testing Service & Whole Foods Market - to learning to rebuild a slant six engine over at Waynesboro’s drag strip area, she has found artistic inspiration everywhere. While each experience has brought its own challenges, none were as great as raising her own ridiculous four children. Three are fully formed, sometimes functional, adults; the youngest is a student at Miller.
You will most frequently find Ms. H in the mud, from her functional pottery business to backcountry bikepacking wandering. Her greatest joys are in sharing the practices of persistence, and patience. Selling her pottery in West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia she bridges relationships based on her pots adding to the small rituals of being human. Her bike-packing wanders often end up convincing unsuspecting students and adults that they too can ride hundreds of self-supported miles. Thus far, she has taken over sixty people on some two-hundred-plus mile cycling trips, where everyone finished with a smile, and an exuberant sense of accomplishment. She is looking forward to the next adventure in the mud.