Many fairy tales begin on an ordinary day. Then, something extraordinary happens.

That’s what occurred in the art studio of ceramicist Gerit Grimm in 2010. Grimm, who had long created ceramics with light colored clay and bedazzling glazes, came across some raw, dark clay that somebody had left behind.

Grimm, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a meticulous and accomplished ceramicist. Her work reflects an accumulation of influences and interests that date back to her childhood in the former German Democratic Republic, her years as a production potter, and her early fascination with the California Funk ceramic movement. She is a voracious consumer of art history and a determined boundary-pusher at the potter’s wheel.

Gerit Grimm claims no kinship to the brothers Grimm, but it’s fair to say her unglazed stoneware figures, fashioned on a potter’s wheel, are amazing tales each and every one. Cunningly crafted part by part, then assembled with elegance and grace, the seven distinct groupings curated by Graeme Reid populate the Hyde Gallery in the white wedge Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA), crowning a hill in West Bend, Wis.

Experience the enchanting sculptures of master ceramist Gerit Grimm. Trained as a factory potter in the former East Germany, Grimm teaches ceramics at UW–Madison and has built an international reputation for her work as a nontraditional ceramist in the twenty-first century. Her figurative works – some life-sized in scale and others composed of dozens of miniature characters– draw upon fairy tales, myths, and biblical stories for inspiration. Her works are imbued with such a force of personality and intricate detail that they immediately engage viewer’s attention with their sense of timelessness.