Francine T. Ozereko has been a ceramicist and studio potter for more than four decades, working from a shared studio in Pelham, Massachusetts. Her practice centers on sgraffito porcelain — a technique of drawing by subtraction, carving through layers of slip to reveal the clay beneath — and on a vocabulary of birds, sky, and the domestic world that has accumulated over a lifetime of looking.

Her functional work — mugs, bowls, plates, vessels — is made to be used. She has said that coffee drunk from the right cup tastes different, and she means it.

The Sky Journal is a daily practice she began in 2010, painting the sky outside her studio window each morning before work. The series now spans thousands of entries. Her father, John Trearchis, flew planes in the Second World War and took his children up with him when they were small. Whether those early flights and the sky journal are connected is something she leaves others to decide.

Her sgraffito birds — wheel-thrown, carved, sometimes perched on wire legs over driftwood — have become her most recognizable sculptural form. Birds fly through everything she makes.

In 2018, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote to Francine on Supreme Court letterhead. "I love the cup you created for me," she wrote. "It will bring a smile every time I use it." The Justice's granddaughter can be seen carrying one of Francine's mugs in the Netflix documentary RBG (2018). Francine has the letter.

She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. She was a resident at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming and has exhibited widely across New England and beyond. She and her husband, the printmaker and ceramicist Frank Ozereko, have shared a studio for over thirty-five years.