How two regional gallery artists ended up in the world of art

During his time at Louisiana Tech, Ryan Ball, a photography major, needed to fulfill credits for the school’s fine arts program, and that’s how he earned a ceramics minor.

He said studying ceramics in college was an accident at first — he just needed classes to graduate. But Ball’s accident is what led to his eventual career choice.

He later moved to Minnesota, where he stayed with ceramics and became an artist with galleries around the upper Midwest.  

“I never really like doodled or drawn or painted or anything like that. And it's funny, because my brother [Michael] did,” Ball said. 

Ball said he was “kind of the wild kid, and everybody kind of thought ‘either he’s going to do something great with his life or he’s going to end up in jail.’”  

In May, Ball ended up with his pottery in Seasons Gallery, part of a feature exhibit called The Splendor of Color. He hosted the gallery in conjunction with Jim Turner, a watercolor artist from Mound, Minn.

Turner, like Ball, didn’t take the conventional, one-track path to pursue art right away. He was an anesthesiologist in Waconia, Minn. before he retired to an empty nest, and he said that gave him more time to take watercolor painting more seriously.  

“And so it's kind of a lifelong interest really, but it's gotten a lot more intense in the last 10 or 15 years,” Turner said.  

Turner paints plein air, meaning he creates art of outdoor scenery amid the outdoors. That said, he doesn’t strive to make his watercolor paintings photorealistic. He also does something less common with his work: he paints on a yupo, a polyethylene material. He said this style lends itself to abstraction.  

“A lot of my images just involve large areas of pattern and an abstraction,” Turner said. “And what appeals to me with it is that ability to go very abstract in the surface, but also, because it's a plastic surface.”

As for Ball's style, he thinks his lack of experience as an artist in his youth may have catered to how he makes pottery now — “I didn't have any bad habits.” And since he’s started out, he’s progressed as an artist by making his own glazes and trying for more unique shapes, now that he doesn’t have to be as cost effective.

“Everybody makes bowls,” he said. “And not a lot of potters want to make dinner plates or platters because, they think ‘more work, more effort, a little bit more skill, but a lot more process, a lot more babysitting.’ The longer I was here, the more I got better at those kinds of things.” 

More of Ball’s work can be found on ryanballpottery.com. Minnetonka Center for the Arts occasionally offers Turner’s classes, and Turner’s work can be found in various locations around the Twin Cities and western Wisconsin throughout the year. More information can be found at: minnetonkaarts.org.