Meet The Team
Our team of skilled artisans and educators are passionate about the art of ceramics. Each member brings a unique background and expertise, fostering a collaborative environment that encourages creativity. Our instructors are dedicated to guiding students through the intricacies of pottery, ensuring that each individual can develop their own unique style and technique.
OWNER
Eve Behar
In 1991, Eve Behar took her first ceramics class in the upper east side of Manhattan. She continued to take classes through college and after at the many studios around the city while also being a grunt working in television production. In 1995 she went to Florence for a year to study ceramics, painting, and art history at the Studio Art Center International for which she received a post baccalaureate diploma. Upon returning from Italy, Eve worked as an assistant making slip cast production work while pursuing her own clay career.
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In 2001, Eve once again went back to full time international study at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada. There she spent three intensive years refining her skills and techniques and developing a body of work. Eve was very happy to accept the highest award of best in show at the graduate show of 2004. Since 2004 and returning to New York, Eve has been in various wholesale and retail shows, gallery exhibitions and featured on the Ceramics Monthly website and the cover of the Potters Council 2015 calendar. She also is a past president of the Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons and former director of Celadon Clay Art Gallery and Shop. After over 30 years as a ceramic artist, Eve is now proud owner of Mudita. She hopes to foster ceramics education as part of her mission in clay.
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Adrienne G. Fierman has been working with clay for over 25 years, exploring the traditional hand-building methods of coiling and pinching. After studying at Greenwich House in NYC, she attended workshops at Anderson Ranch, Peter’s Valley, Japan, and the Taos Art School, where she felt inspired by the native american approach of “listening to the clay” and working intuitively. The quiet, organic approach of Japanese ceramics has also had a powerful influence on her aesthetic sensibility.
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Mary Flanagan Jaffe has been working as a studio potter since 1980 creating functional and sculptural ceramics inspired by both vast landscapes and the small intrinsic beauties of the natural world. In her Bridgehampton studio she explores altering the traditional vessel forms using shapes and textures suggestive of organic patterns found in the beachfront and farmland of the East End of Long Island.
Mary Jaffe earned a BFA in Ceramics from Long Island University, Southampton NY. Her postgraduate studies took her to Instituto Allende in Mexico, the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and a subsequent five year apprenticeship in a production pottery.
For the past 25 years Mary has enjoyed exploring clay with children and adults, helping them create and discover a passion for clay.
LYNN LEFF
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Lynn Leff has been immersed in art: selling art, collecting art, and enlightening herself with visits to art museums, galleries and artist studios for years. It wasn’t until she walked into a clay studio, that the desire of wanting to create art herself had occurred to her. Since then, clay has become her art form — she became lost in it and mesmerized with clay over the past several years. In fact, her first stop was the Clay Potato in Bridgehampton, ny.
She then began her work throwing clay, and today, she is primarily a hand builder, although she enjoys the liberties of combining the two processes. Touching, feeling and forming the clay is the most satisfying to Lynn. The lesson for her; it’s the process that matters. Every moment she spends handling clay is a precious moment to her.
Lynn creates both functional and non-functional ceramics that often express a quirky sense of humor. She teaches children privately and in group settings and loves watching them create and involve themselves in the material.
DEBRA SCHWARTZ
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Debra Schwartz is a ceramic artist whose work is grounded in the traditional hand building techniques of pinching, coiling, and slab construction. She began her journey with clay over 15 years ago at New York’s 92nd Street Y, where she discovered its healing and meditative nature. Deeply inspired by the natural beauty of the East End, Debra’s work reflects the quiet rhythms of the landscape—its tides, textures, and organic forms.
For the past several years, Debra has served as President of the Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons, where she has been dedicated to fostering community and sharing her passion for all things clay. Through her leadership and creative practice, she continues to celebrate the transformative power of working with one’s hands and the joy of connecting through art.
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Kieran Ryan, primarily a visual arts faculty member and director of the stem program at the Ross School, has been teaching ceramics since 2016. His work on the wheel explores the balance between simplicity and complexity, negative space, and functional forms, with a focus on the contrast between porcelain and darker clay bodies. Kieran also explores the intersection of ceramics and technology, working with 3d-printed ceramic materials and designing 3d-printed tools to enhance the traditional ceramic-making process. He has taught students from 6th grade through adulthood, guiding them in creative exploration and craftsmanship. Prior to joining Ross School, Kieran worked at the Brick co-workshop in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he worked under an engineering firm, Cofab design, and a metal sculptor. His exposure to engineering practices during this time significantly informs his ceramic practices and processes, integrating technical precision with creative expression. With degrees from the University of Massachusetts and Greenfield Community College, Kieran's background spans design, machining, and a wide exploration of materials.
BELLE O’SHAUGHNESSY
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Belle O’Shaughnessy is a sculptor and ceramic artist based on the East End of Long Island. She studied Sculpture and Ceramics at Dickinson College and later served as a post-baccalaureate artist and studio assistant in the college’s ceramics department.
In her time at Dickinson, she trained in handbuilding and sculptural forms exploring themes of the human figure and subtle ways of abstracting it. At Mudita, she brings that same spirit of curiosity into her teaching. She is always interested in how far a piece can be pushed: how the surface can be altered, how texture can be developed, and how, or what, form can communicate. Through texture, glaze, and form, her pottery explores the intricate patterns found in nature, anatomy, and histology. She finds that by looking closely at the world around her, amazing designs can be sampled.
Belle approaches ceramics as both an art form and a meditative practice. She believes that working with clay supports focus, patience, and presence, while inviting makers to challenge themselves, take risks, start over, and remain curious throughout the creative process. Taught to her by Professor of Painting Todd Arsenault, her studio mantra is, "Nothing is precious." While ceramics require discernment and levels of decision making, Belle encourages students to be open to chance and play with the unpredictable. She aims to create a space where students develop technical skills, quiet the mind, and explore their own aesthetic voice.