Introducing Mug of the Month Artist, February 2026: Lisa Berczel
- PennOhio Clay Guild
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Meet our February Mug of the Month artist, Lisa Berczel; a maker whose creative life has traveled from high‑gloss ad campaigns to the quiet focus of the clay studio.
Lisa is a retired featured artist and product‑development consultant/educator in the food and cosmetic industries. For many years, her primary canvas was the human body: airbrush, black light, and hyper‑real makeup made her work instantly recognizable on mass‑market book covers, magazine fronts, international ad campaigns, music videos, reality TV, the runway, and live performers. When she wasn’t painting people, she was lending the same precision to more traditional surfaces, cars and motorcycles, race boats and surfboards, murals, theatrical props, artisan confections, and classic canvas.
Today, Lisa’s explorations are a bit quieter but just as intentional. She divides her studio time among lampworked glass beads, watercolor, sculpting, and pottery, while also serving as CEO of a boutique print‑design consulting firm.
Lisa's body of work throughout her artistic career
It’s never really felt like my artistic endeavors have had a “voice” of my own. True, a piece would have intent with a very specific story to tell, but technical execution was the tour de force.
Lisa's Claywork
Behind all of this is what she calls “the pursuit of adaptive techniques.” Rather than chasing a single, fixed “artistic voice,” Lisa is fascinated by mimicry and technical transformation: sugar that looks like glass, trompe‑l’oeil body paint that fools the eye, and surface treatments that slip between eras and cultures. Nesuke carving, Art Nouveau curves, Egyptian motifs, Tiffany glass, Chinese brushwork, Fabergé enamel. These influences circulate like familiar companions in her imagination.
February 2026 Mug of the Month: Octopus
Her February Octopus Mug is a deep dive into those classical influences. First inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s octopus documentaries and later revisited in an airbrushed illustration, the motif resurfaced when a slab‑built mug in 2023 seemed to ask for “a little more of something.” With a few more years of clay under her belt, Lisa set out to create a fully realized design: an octopus reaching up toward a mug, its tentacles interacting with the object rather than functioning as structural supports.
The form itself is all curves and quiet movement, meant to slip comfortably into a Craftsman or Art Nouveau collection while echoing the silhouettes of Roman vessels. The tentacles become a case study in elegant simplification; the color palette nods to classical Greek pottery; the overall form draws n Chinese and Japanese archetypes. It’s a small object with a global family tree.
Inspiration for February Design
Goals and Challenges as the Design heads into Production
Of course, “no plan survives contact with the build.” Scaling up on the wheel, throwing larger, more consistent forms proved its own challenge, and early tests stayed closer to cup‑than‑mug size. Hand‑sculpting four tentacles on every mug quickly became unsustainable, prompting a return to plaster casting and sprig molds to balance repetition with variation. Even the suckers demanded problem‑solving: they wanted to pop off when piped onto firmer leather‑hard clay, leading Lisa to Dremel small recesses to increase surface area and adhesion. By comparison, glaze testing has been almost suspiciously smooth.
The result will be a mug that embodies Lisa’s love of adaptive technique and illusion, a piece that feels at home in several historical traditions at once, while still carrying the quiet drama of an octopus reaching for its prize.
