Take a deeper look into the ocean’s depths with Casey Potts, GAC Resident Potter, and Marsha Borden, GAC Teaching Artist, as they present their side-by-side solo shows at Guilford Art Center August 8 through 31, 2025. There will be a free opening reception Sunday, August, 10 from 3pm to 5 pm.
Into the Deep: A World Within is a medley of marine-themed artworks in a variety of mediums, including fiber, textiles, ceramics, and stoneware.
A recipient of the University of Connecticut’s competitive Sea Grant Award in 2022, Marsha Borden’s work depicts larger-than-life artistic replicas of various microalgae that live in Long Island Sound. Casey Potts’ work represents the culmination of a year-long Artist-In-Residence program at Guilford Art Center where every piece invites a second look. Inspired by the ocean’s layered ecosystems, Potts’ and Borden’s work celebrates the magic found beneath the surface—worlds within worlds, often unseen but always present.
The gallery is open 7 days a week and is always free entry: Monday-Saturday 10am-4pm, Sunday 12-4pm. Guilford Art Center is located at 411 Church Street (Route 77), Guilford CT 06436.
For more information, visit www.guilfordartcenter.org or call (203) 453-5947.
About Casey Potts
Casey Potts is a ceramic artist working in both wheel-thrown and hand-built stoneware. Her work blurs the line between functional form and abstract sculpture, weaving together whimsy, bold color, and oceanic mystery. A Connecticut native, she earned her BS in Ceramics from Southern Connecticut State University in 2020, where she received the Mary Secka Ceramic Award and was chosen to represent the university in a statewide exhibition.
Graduating into a global pandemic and navigating immense personal loss, Casey found healing in movement—living in several states, trying new things, and exploring how people create a sense of place. That same spirit of curiosity and adventure shapes her ceramic practice, which spans a variety of techniques tied together by a shared fascination with layered environments—especially the hidden depths of the sea.
Each piece she creates holds unexpected details: hidden drawings, tactile textures, subtle lighting, or sound-producing rattles. Her work invites viewers to slow down and ask: What am I really looking at? What else is here? In a world built for fast glances, her ceramics reward deeper attention. Like ecosystems beneath the ocean’s surface, her pieces hold emotional resonance, secret structures, and quiet complexity—tiny universes nestled inside one another, waiting to be discovered. Each one a reminder: there’s always more going on beneath the surface.
About Marsha Borden
Marsha Borden is a New Haven County, Connecticut-based American artist who works primarily in textile-based mediums. A juried artist member of the Guilford Art League, Borden is on the faculty at Guilford Art Center in Guilford, Connecticut and is a frequent Teaching Artist with Connecticut Public Libraries. Her work has been juried into numerous local and national exhibitions and is featured in several print and online publications, including the Hartford Courant, the New Haven Independent, The Arts Paper of the Arts Council of New Haven, and the Guilford Courier. A highlight of Borden’s 2024 solo exhibition for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection at the Kellogg Environmental Center was a large-scale sculpture of the Diamondback Terrapin, a state species of special concern. She was awarded the 2022 Connecticut Sea Grant Arts Support Award for her artistic work with Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). Borden was Artist-in-Residence at Common Ground Urban Farm and Environmental Education Center (2020) and at Ely Center of Contemporary Art (2019) and both in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree, a Master of Science Degree, and a pre-doctoral Sixth-Year Diploma in Psychology. She has recently studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Born and raised in upstate New York, Borden currently works from her studio in Erector Square, an artist’s enclave in New Haven, Connecticut.
About Guilford Art Center
The Guilford Art Center is a non-profit school, shop and gallery established to nurture and support excellence in the arts. Through classes for adults and children, gallery programs, a shop of contemporary crafts, and special events, the Center fulfills its mission to provide opportunities for the public to participate in the arts, to experience their cultural and historical diversity, and to appreciate the process and product of creative work.
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