Maria Dondero has lived in Athens, GA for ten years now and considers it her home.  Born in Yaoundé Cameroon, the youngest of five children, her large family and travel has influenced her work greatly.  A love of eating delicious food and an appreciation for how the presentation of that food adds to the experience lead her to pottery. She took her first class while living in Guanajuato, Mexico in 2000 and fell in love and has been making pots and teaching ever since. Following in her family’s footsteps, Dondero continued to study and work abroad, being particularly influenced by Terracotta in Italy and slipware in Japan.
 

Her work focuses on functional pottery whose aesthetics draw on the age old and worldwide history of ceramics. While subtly referencing pottery traditions from around the world, Maria intuitively sketches images from her surroundings, grounding her work in the Georgia soil.