The Role of an Artist and Teacher

A great strength of Hood College lies in its faculty. With professors who are knowledgeable and experienced in their fields, students get more than just basic information. One such accomplished professor is Kristin Müller, adjunct instructor in the ceramics program. Müller has lived around the globe, worked as a professor and a curator, helped start a group that works to promote craft schools, and is the author of several books. A Master of Fine Arts graduate from Hood in 2014, she became an instructor after graduation. As she explains, “I thoroughly enjoy my teaching at Hood because the students are committed, intelligent and talented and the new facilities are world class”.

Müller was born in Panama and moved back and forth between the United States, Argentina and Chile. After completing high school in Chile and Connecticut, she got her undergraduate degree in studio arts from Southern Connecticut State University, where one of her professors, Ruth Crespi, was a Hood alumna. Crespi introduced her Joyce Michaud, who had just developed the Hood Ceramics program from a certificate program to the MFA. Müller was able to complete the MFA while working several jobs as a single mother.

As an instructor, Müller explains her philosophy as “(being) committed to nurturing every student’s potential...The most rewarding is helping individuals to connect their own specific human experience to their work, beyond the body knowledge they develop through the process of making works in clay. I have a deep interest in facilitating people to connect to their ‘inner voice’ as it relates to our greater human experience, to develop their body of work while developing their critical thinking”

Müller specializes in wood-fired ceramics and maintains a studio with an Anagama hybrid kiln in Pennsylvania. She exhibits her work nationally and is the executive director of Peters Valley School of Craft in Layton, New Jersey. Prior to her tenure at Peters Valley, she taught ceramics at two colleges, was education director of Brookfield Craft Center and also served as curator and ceramics instructor of the Bignell Exhibition Gallery. She is also a writer who contributes to ceramics and fine craft publications and blogs. She authored “The Potter’s Studio Handbook: A Guide to Hand Built and Wheel-Thrown Ceramics” (2007) and is co-author of both “The Potter’s Complete Studio Handbook: The Essential, Start-to-Finish Guide for Ceramic Artists” with Jeff Zamek (2011), and most recently “Making Good: An Inspirational Guide to Being an Artist Craftsman,” with Hood Studio Arts Manager Jacklyn Scott and Tommy Simpson.

We are proud to have such an experienced instructor in our program!