Nebraskaland

30 Nebraskaland • June 2024 comeback in America. Pelter, a college student at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln at the time, fortuitously met a china painter at the Gateway Mall in Lincoln in 1976. "I watched her for a while and thought, 'I can do that.' So, I took her card and ended up taking lessons with her. To be honest with you, it was pretty inexplicable," Pelter said. "I was a college student, and these lessons were $75 — I didn't have that kind of money, but somehow I did it." Like many during that time, Pelter had caught the second heyday of china painting, which happened in the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the advent of the electric kiln. Previously, kilns were kerosene- or gas-fi red, and they were dangerous. Also, the exhaust from these old kilns meant that artists couldn't store them in the basement or garage, another inconvenience. When Pelter and her husband, Larry, built their current home in Lincoln in 1985, they built Pelter an art studio. She took a leap and decided to turn this decade-long hobby into a career and began traveling to countless art and craft shows. Pelter also made a living painting tiles to decorate the kitchens, bathrooms and fi replaces in peoples' homes. Her dedication to this art form has spanned close to half a century. Painting on Porcelain Pelter compares painting on porcelain to "painting on glass," as there's no texture to hold the paint in place, as opposed to canvas or paper, so technique and brush control are important skills. Another challenging aspect of china painting is that the objects she paints on are rarely completely fl at. "Most other forms of painting are done on fl at rectangles, so it takes a sense of design to get the image on an appropriate piece of china in an appropriate way," Pelter said. "It's funny how you get hooked on things. For some reason, I'm really hooked on porcelain. Canvas and paper just seem dull. They don't appeal to me." With china painting, pigments are applied onto a fi red, glazed surface — such as a plate or bowl that you'd purchase. To set the image, the piece of porcelain is essentially fi red again to about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, during which the glaze softens, allowing the pigments to "fall into" the glaze. "As the glaze cools, those pigments get caught in the glaze. And so, it becomes a permanent surface. The image is no longer lying on top of the glaze — it's lying in the glaze," Pelter explained. Often, Pelter's paintings may be inspired by a single color. For example, she might feel like painting something "red" one day. The next step would be deciding what that "red" subject would be, after which she searches for a photograph to use as reference. Pelter claims to have one of the largest clip fi les in existence, though Google has been useful in recent years. Due to the challenging nature of painting ABOVE: Pelter working on a pheasant plate during living history weekend at the Morton Mansion at Arbor Lodge State Historical Park. RIGHT: Five of six pheasant plates that Pelter painted for her "Nebraska Treasure" collection.

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