Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts is pleased to announce a partnership with the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay to host Watershed Center’s 2012 Summer Artists Speaker Series.

Speaker series presentations will be held in the Bosarge Family Education Center on Tuesdays, July 3 and 31, and Aug. 14 and 28, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is at 132 Botanical Gardens Dr., off Barters Island Road in Boothbay.

Throughout the summer, nationally recognized ceramic artists will speak about their work, influences, travels and more. Each artist speaker will be in residence at Watershed Center at the time of their presentation; visitors are welcome to the Watershed Center studios, 19 Brick Hill Rd. in Newcastle.

Tuesday, July 3, speakers are Leigh Taylor Mickelson, Jill Oberman and Matt Hyleck.

Mickelson’s work is, appropriately, botanically themed. Her recent work explores the give and take relationships between pollinators and plants. Hyleck’s work is defined directly by his love for natural objects. Natural forms and symbols find their way into his functional pottery where he seeks to capture the interaction between object and environment, and an object’s ability to shape its environment. Oberman’s current work explores the elusive space of the horizon. Her sculptures attempt to convey a sense that the horizon might also be a point of restoration: a space where there is a convergence between expectation, destiny, desire, hopelessness, distance and vision.