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Dillsboro to host first regional pottery festival Nov. 5
By Lynn Hotaling
Potters from across the Southeast will gather in Dillsboro a week from Saturday for the inaugural Western North Carolina Pottery Festival.
The daylong event will be from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. (rain or shine) on Saturday, Nov. 5, and will include demonstrations of all aspects of ceramics, said festival organizer Brant Barnes of Riverwood Pottery.
Joe Frank McKee of Dillsboro will be among the potters demonstrating his techniques during the inaugural Western North Carolina Pottery Festival slated for Saturday, Nov. 5 on Front Street in Dillsboro. The daylong event will feature pottery-makers from across the Southeast and will run from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
What will make this festival different from others will be the demonstrations of the craft, said Barnes.
“We’ll be making pottery, glazing pottery and firing pottery, right there on Front Street,” he said. “We want this to be as much educational as sales.”
A raku kiln will be set up with firings every hour, all day long. Having several firings will make the event more memorable for those attending, and it will also boost sales, Barnes said.
Brant Barnes, shown here demonstrating how he makes the “blow” pots he turns into oil lamps, says the Western North Carolina Pottery Festival, slated for Saturday, Nov. 5, in downtown Dillsboro, will be unique in that it will focus only on pottery. The daylong event will include demonstrations of throwing and glazing, and pots glazed and fired will be for sale later that day, Barnes said. – Herald photo by Nick Breedlove
“We’ve learned from experience in our shop. People buy more if they see the pots being made and glazed,” he said.
The lineup of pottery makers includes the festival’s other organizer, Joe Frank McKee of Tree House Pottery.
Both Barnes and McKee are preparing pots for the raku firings, and those pots will be available for sale that same day, according to Barnes.
“Raku is so spontaneous,” he said. “It’s more of an art form than one meant to be functional; it’s not durable. But it has a beautiful, soft quality.”
The quicker times required for raku firings make the style ideal for this type of festival, which is built around lots of demonstrations aimed at engaging visitors, Barnes said.
In raku, pots are placed in a kiln full of sawdust after the glazes are melted. The pottery “smokes in the absence of air,” which Barnes said produces a chemical reaction called local reduction. That means that there’s not enough oxygen to burn, so oxygen is burned out of the glazes in an attempt to combust, he said.
“For example, copper usually produces a green color, but in raku, it turns red,” he said.
Along with the throwing and glazing exhibitions, some potters will also demonstrate hand-built techniques, including slab-building, coil pots, extrusion (clay is forced through dies) and pinch pots, Barnes said.
In addition to Barnes and McKee, four more Jackson County artists – Travis Berning of Dillsboro; Laurey-Faye Long of Balsam; Kimberly Gray of Sylva and Susan Phillips of Dillsboro – will display their wares.
Like the festival itself, the six local potters exhibit a range of styles.
Barnes specializes in high-fired stoneware using Chinese glazes.
“I’m most interested in blending form and function with beautiful glazes,” he said.
McKee, who creates functional stoneware and table ware, said he also concentrates on producing raku and horsehair pottery.
“They’re more decorative,” he said. “They’re low-fired using horsehair to create designs of black lines.”
Berning, who is McKee’s partner at Tree House Pottery, said he makes both decorative and functional pieces.
“I specialize in leaf motifs, where I embed actual leaves in the clay and paint them with colored slips or stains so they look realistic,” Berning said.
Long, who works from her home in Balsam, creates landscapes and natural images on her pots through embossed designs. She describes her recent ornamental pieces as “visual poems to the Southern Appalachians” and says her pots are “purposefully pretty, lyrical and narrative.”
Phillips, of Flying Cat Studio in Dillsboro, produces mostly stoneware but does some raku. Some of her work will be fired during the festival’s raku firings, she said.
She described her pots as both “functional and fun,” and will display a variety of pieces that range from lanterns and candle-holders to birdhouses.
Gray, who operates Mud Puppies studio from her home on East Fork, said she specializes in unique, functional pieces like soup-and-cracker bowls, chip-and-dip bowls and soup tureens that are good for everyday use.
“I’m pretty well known for my glazes,” she said. “I use really beautiful, layered glazes that are full of lots of different colors.”
Also featured will be Chris Gray from Dallas, Texas, who will provide a fast-fire kiln demonstration. In two and a half hours, he will fire his kiln to 2,350 degrees Fahrenheit and back down again. According to McKee, that process normally takes eight to 12 hours.
“Chris will be a big draw,” said McKee. “To go up that fast and come down that fast is usually unheard of. Most of the potters who are coming to the show want to see this kiln.”
Barnes said he expects the WNC festival to grow each year, because there is not another event in the mountain region that limits its focus to pottery.
“This gives us an opportunity to do something unique,” he said. “There are lots of craft shows, fairs and festivals where potters display and sell their wares along with other artists and craftspersons. But there is no other festival in the region that is exclusively pottery.”
Barnes doesn’t deny that he and McKee were motivated in part by a degree of self-promotion when they hit on the idea of a fall pottery festival.
“We’re here in Dillsboro, so when people think of pottery, we want them to think of Dillsboro,” Barnes said. “After all, Dillsboro has historically been home to working craftspeople, and we want to continue to emphasize that.”
North Carolina has long had a reputation as a premier pottery-making state, but that focus has typically been in the eastern part of the state, in the area south of Greensboro, he said.
“We want to expand that to include the western part of the state,” Barnes said. “There are so many potters here now.”
The festival will have booths along Front Street, as well as a demonstration area along Church Street where exhibiting potters will demonstrate with two wheels.
“We’ll have a wide range of pottery – from folk to contemporary – and it will be a quality representation,” McKee said. “Everybody that’s coming is rock solid. Most have their own studios and galleries, and we have several Southern Highland Craft Guild members.”
Other North Carolina artists showing their work during the Nov. 5 festival will include Kim and Pete McWhirter of Burnsville; Marie Hribar of Otto; John and Scottie Post of Vale; John Saunders of Hudson; Terance Painter of Maggie Valley; and Denise Cvoretz of Leicester. In addition, the event will include potters from Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
According to Barnes, the Nov. 5 exhibitors cover the spectrum of pottery.
“We’ll have some who make purely functional ware, and some who make purely art work,” he said. “Most of the artists blend the two.”
Pottery for sale during the festival will range in price from about $10 to about $400, which means there should be something to fit everyone’s pocketbook, Barnes said.
“We’re really excited about this festival,” he said. There’s a lot of good feelings and positive feedback from everyone we talk to – everybody thinks it’s a good idea.”
Admission is free, and food concessions will be available. For festival information, call Barnes at 586-3601 or McKee at 631-5100, or visit mountainlovers.com.
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