The Ann Arbor Potters Guild “Self-Portrait at 60” at Washtenaw Community College’s Gallery One celebrates this venerable local institution in high style.

A cooperative nonprofit organization of more than 50 members who share the responsibility and administration of their studio at 201 Hill St., the Guild holds two sales per year at the studio (one in the spring and another in early December).

The Guild has also participated in the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair since it began in 1959 as a founding member. And it hosts the single largest demonstration space and display booth at this annual July celebration of the visual arts.

Past President Deb Comoros explains the show’s title: “I began to think about all of the creative people at the Potters Guild and how they might express themselves for this (anniversary) show. And the idea of a self portrait came to me. I thought one’s art is a reflection of the self.”

Self or not, it’s certainly a reflection of the group. The Guild ‘s ceramicists have loaded Gallery One salon-style with a range of diverse ceramics running from unassuming functional pottery to art ceramics that gleefully push the envelope in contemporary art.

The firing techniques on display include low fire oxidation, rake, smoke firing, as well as high fire reduction.

“Individual members have the resources to choose which influences will guide their work and the opportunities to develop their own voices,” says Sally Goldberg, current guild president, in her gallery statement; emphasizing the fact that the Guild is foremost “a collective of potters each producing her or his unique artistic expression.”

That’s a lot of communal karma for an organization that started with only nine original members (Hilda Burr, Wilma Donahue, Eleanor Laborite, William Lewis, Harvey Littleton, Ruth Lobdell, Carlos Palmer, Giulia Sunblind, and Harriet Waite) in 1949.

Longtime member Ethel Potts reminisces in a link at the guild’s website that the question these founding nine had at the time was whether or not to go public with their classes since these members had originally joined together to educate each other. It was a natural, Potts recalls, as they cooperatively built their kiln; pooled their resources; subsidized the studio’s rent and telephone; as well as shared the leadership and other administrative matters.

Goldberg adds, “The Guild’s founding principles of cooperation and non-discrimination from 1950 still endures. Most of today’s Guild members initially trained as Guild students (being) able to work up to 21 hours per week side-by-side with members outside of class hours, becoming familiar with the workings of the Guild.”

The results are colorfully on display at GalleryOne.

There’s no question but that the exhibit is a joint venture, as no two styles of ceramics here are remotely alike. Indeed, in a display where a large number of the artworks are functional, the larger part of the display’s interest lies is how individualized these artists become from such common beginnings.

Alex Pratt’s porcelain “Tea Pot,” J.T. Abernathy’s “Copper Red Bottle,” and Dorie Mickelson’s “Vase with Riverstone Carving” show us everything aesthetically purposeful about contemporary functional ceramics.

Pratt’s 6-inch “Tea Pot” is a miniature underglazed concave masterwork. Classically proportioned with a dimpled base, his “Tea Pot” exhibits a superb formal balance with equally restrained dimples on the pot’s lid reaching towards its Victorianesque finial.

Abernathy’s 14x7 inch “Copper Red Bottle,” on the other hand, reflects this longtime Ann Arbor master’s fascination with spare, opaque construction that has a deceptively dense, weathered look. And Mickelson’s “Vase with Riverstone Carving” is exceedingly handsome 15x7 inch hand-carved porcelain whose “stoneware” neck garlands a strikingly sleek tapering oxide finish body.

Among the non-functional — which is to say, ceramics as artform — Jeri Hollister’s “Yin and Yang 2” and Monica Wilson’s “La Souk III” give us a glimpse at the sort of creativity non-functional ceramic artists are capable of producing.

Hollister’s “Yin and Yang 2” follows the line of the freestanding horse sculptures she’s consistently crafted through her career. Standing side-by-side, roughly a foot and a half each, these two glazed and stained equine figures reflect the vigorous freedom Hollister seeks to depict through her hand-carved melding. With one horse looking forward, and the other looking down, there is a dynamic interaction of energies between these creatures.

By contrast, Wilson’s “La Souk III” is all-out nonrepresentational art. Wilson’s large rectangular terra cotta wall piece looks everything like an incongruous mounted darkish spong. The sculpture’s myriad punctures are integral to an imaginatively realized artwork whose mystery transcends material and meaning. It also shows us that ceramics has come a long, long way in 60 years.

“Potters Guild: A Self-Portrait at 60” will continue through July 16 at Washtenaw Community College Gallery One, Student Center Building Room 108, 4800 E. Huron River Dr. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Tuesday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday; and 10 a.m.-noon Friday. For information, call 734-477-8512.