Potters

The Country's Largest Community of Potters . . . Carrying on Tradition!

“Ceramic forms are the oldest record of human activity. I like being part of that conversation.”

- Beth Gore

I was especially drawn to clay during my Art Education training in college, and have been a fulltime potter for 28 years. I’ve had some kind of art project in the works since the day I was old enough to grip my first crayon. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a degree in Art Education,
I taught elementary school Art and then went to work as a decorator at a large pottery. The owner asked me to help with the books due to my experience in various office jobs during college, and the business grew so fast I never got out of the office. Wanting to get back to the creative process, I moved to NC in 1987 to open Cady Clay Works with my husband. As a child I spent weekends and summers in dusty basements and garages, trailing my parents who were searching for rustic antiques long before they became fashionable. I grew up surrounded by simple objects such as sturdy, well-made, unpretentious furniture and Red Wing crocks and jugs. Everything in our house was meant to be used. I have never drawn a distinction between art and craft, as I think both should enhance daily life, and enrich our simplest daily tasks. I love working in clay because it can be such an unpretentious medium, one that appeals to our senses in a visual as well as a tactile way, and one that every person can relate to. Our plastic reproduction, cyber-sophisticated world needs hand-made objects such as coffee mugs or graceful pottery vases to link humans back to the natural world. After spending several years on the “fringes” of the creative process; teaching children, doing pottery bookwork and glazing pieces thrown by my husband, I am making time to hand build with clay, which I have always loved. I like the organic, asymmetrical, often serendipitous forms that start with a simple slab of clay. The cool feel of clay in one’s hands and the joy of manipulating it toward the idea in one’s mind is restful and therapeutic, and the idea that a creation of mine may be on earth long after I’m gone seems like a magical connection to the future.