Cyndi Casemier
Lake Michigan Ceramic Artist
Hi, I’m Cyndi Casemier, a ceramic artist living and working in Grand Haven, Michigan.
I grew up near Lake Michigan, and the shoreline has always been part of how I understand place. Water, sand, changing light, wind, bird tracks, the movement of waves—these are things I have known for most of my life. But over time, I have learned to look at them more closely.
Clay became part of my life years later while I was raising my family in Vermont. I took a community ceramics class and found a material that gave me a way to explore form, surface, and the things I was noticing around me. Eventually, a ceramics residency in Portugal helped me understand that I was most interested in building forms by hand and allowing the surface itself to become part of the story.
Today, I create one-of-a-kind ceramic vessels, bowls, mugs, and sculptural forms inspired by the Lake Michigan shoreline.
I hand-build primarily with porcelain, often leaving evidence of the making process visible. Coils, pinched surfaces, carved lines, impressions, and irregular edges become part of each piece. I also incorporate actual Lake Michigan beach sand into many of my glazes. During firing, the sand becomes part of the ceramic surface, creating texture and variations that can never be repeated exactly.
My work is not meant to reproduce the lake.
Instead, I am interested in the small things we might walk past without noticing: the lines left in wet sand, the way water moves around a stone, the changing color of the horizon, a bird’s tracks before the next wave arrives, or sunlight catching the surface of the water.
These observations eventually find their way into the clay.
Some appear as circles suggesting suns or moons. Others become bird tracks, lines, layers of glaze, shoreline colors, or textures that ask to be touched as well as seen.
The more time I spend making, the more I realize that my work is really about looking closely.
I don’t begin with the goal of recreating something I have seen. I begin by noticing. Then I bring those observations back to the studio and ask:
What happens if I try this?
That question keeps my work changing. Like the shoreline itself, no two pieces are exactly alike.
My hope is that the finished work does something similar for you—that it encourages you to slow down, look a little closer, and notice the small details waiting to be seen.
From the shoreline to the studio
Lake Michigan is more than inspiration for my work. In many pieces, it is physically present through the sand gathered along its shore.
Each piece is made individually in my Grand Haven studio and is intended to become part of everyday life—a bowl on the table, a vase filled with flowers, a mug held each morning, or a vessel that simply invites you to stop and look.
Slow down. Look closely.
Small details wait quietly,
ready to be seen.
