Frances Senska was a ceramic artist and teacher who helped make Montana an important place for pottery and clay art. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Senska)

Frances Maude Senska was born on March 9, 1914, in Batanga, in what is now Cameroon, where her parents were missionaries, and she later moved to the United States and earned art degrees from the University of Iowa. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, she discovered a love of clay in night classes and, in 1946, moved to Bozeman to teach at Montana State College (now Montana State University), where she built a ceramics studio with her students in a basement storeroom, even helping them dig and prepare local clay themselves. Senska taught at MSU until 1973 and became known as the "grandmother of ceramics in Montana," helping to train important potters like Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos and helping to start the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena. She received many honors, including an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Montana State University and the Montana Governor's Award for the Arts, and she kept making simple, useful pots into her 90s, often saying about herself, "I make pots."