STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Angela Neiwert tilled the soil, planting and gleaning crops growing up on a potato farm near Eden, Idaho. And the experience rubbed off on her career as a sculptor.

“I was always going in dirt spud cellars and it smelled so good. I loved that smell. Every time I work in clay I get that same earthy smell,” she said.

Today Neiwert is married to a potato farmer, their home south off Bellevue off Gannett Road. And on Friday and Saturday she will join 39 other artists who will open their studios for the Artist Studio Tour of the Wood River Valley.

Angela Neiwert has crafted a long line of teapots and teacups.

Artists will open their studios from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 23 and 24, offering the curious a free peek behind the scenes at how they do their creative work. (See today’s Eye on Sun Valley story “Artist Studio Tour Showcases…” for all the details).

Neiwert got a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a double emphasis in ceramics and painting at Boise State University. Then she returned for a Master of Fine Art with an emphasis on ceramics. She worked as an art teacher at art camps, taught special education art in high school and even taught ceramics at her alma mater before turning her attention to Boulder Mountain Clayworks in Ketchum where she teaches students how to throw on the wheel and hand build sculptures with clay.

“I got tired with painting on a square canvas so I make circular and triangular canvases through my clay work,” she said. “I build my own canvases.”

Neiwert’s clay creations have gone through phases. She has crafted a long line of mugs and cups, some of which would fit right in at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in “Alice in Wonderland.” Some are just one and two inches tall; others, three feet tall.

Angela Neiwert shows her sculpture of a mother filling up a cup with time and energy.

Some of her work is inspired by nature, including sandhill cranes, quail and Sawtooth Mountain flowers.

She also has a line of works representing motherhood, in which the mothers do not resemble porcelain dolls but women with stories to tell.

“I had just become a mother and I was also studying African art so I brought the sacred mother into my pieces,” she said.

When vacationing at Payette Lake near McCall, Neiwert saw roots underneath the water and incorporated them into a line of sculptures, including some in which roots hold up treehouses.

This piece of pottery allowed Angela Neiwert to marry her love of painting with ceramics.

“They were almost frightening, yet at the same time intriguing,” she said. “Art has to come from within. You never know what’s going to come out. I don’t want to be pigeonholed on one thing. At the same time, it’s all related—like family.

This treehouse was inspired by the roots she saw beneath the surface of Payette Lake.