Grand Opening for Pottery Studio

A ribbon cutting and dedication for the newly renovated Community Pottery Studio of the Black Mountain Center for the Arts is scheduled for Friday, April 11th at 4:30 pm.  From 5-7 pm, there will be an open house and an opening reception for a show in the Upper Gallery by the BMCA Pottery Studio resident potters, Geoff Bird, Lane Kaufmann, AJ Reisman, and Annie Singletary.  The Black Mountain Center for the Arts is located at 225 W. State Street in the old City Hall.  Contact information is 828/669-0930 or www.BlackMountainArts.org.

The renovation of the old City Garage into the new Pottery Studio was funded by a grant from the Janirve Foundation and much of the new equipment was funded by a grant from the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.  Work on the project began in 2005. Gale Jackson, Executive Director of the Center was on-site coordinator, with MWB Construction as General Contractor. Sculptor Julia Burr served as mosaic tile mural installation artist for the west wall. David Seils created the bas relief mural installation on the east wall.  Front elevation design was by Appalachian Land Planning & Design.  Deck design and general carpentry was by All That & More, Inc.  MisKimmen’s Brothers Brick masons, Peterson Electric, and Black Mountain Stove and Chimney were other contractors for the renovation.  The interior painting was completed by a work crew from the NC Department of Corrections in Marion.

The Pottery Studio, which faces the municipal parking lot off Daugherty Street, was formerly the old City Garage, an annex of the Center for the Arts.  Initially Geoff Bird loaned his personal pottery equipment in order to offer limited clay classes and raku firings.  The Board and Staff of BMCA accepted the challenge of turning the building into a first-rate pottery studio. A committee of local potters recommended equipment and interior design.  The new studio is equipped with 6 electric wheels, 2 electric kilns and kiln room, a slab roller, wedging table and glazing station.  In addition, area potters donated other valuable equipment and supplies.

Classes in the new studio began in January.  Twenty-four students have already taken advantage of the classes offered.   A new schedule of classes begins in March in 4 or 9-week sessions on Monday thru Thursday, and Saturdays, including a class just for kids ages 6-12 on Tuesday afternoons.  For more pottery class information contact the Center at 828/669-0930.

The show in the Upper Gallery will run from April 4-26 with both utilitarian and artistic works by the four resident potters:  Geoff Bird, Lane Kaufmann, AJ Reisman, and Annie Singletary. 

Bird, owner of Morning Sky Pottery in Swannanoa, has been a potter for 40 years and has taught wheel throwing, hand building, and Raku at the Center for several years.  Kaufmann, a graduate of Indiana’s Goshen College, has worked with a variety of firing techniques including wood firing and salt firing. Slip casting, slam molds, slab building, and a plethora of wheel throwing techniques are a few of his specialties. Reisman studied clay at Warren Wilson College and went on to instruct in various studios throughout western NC and in central Vermont. He prefers functional ware off the wheel, obstructing forms, and using earth tones and textures to reflect the pottery's origin within the earth.   Singletary completed a 2-year residency at the Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts after graduating with a B.F.A. from UNC-A. Her specialization is creating utilitarian pottery with porcelain clays and a wide variety of unique glazes.

The Pottery Studio, not only a transformation and renewal of an old building into a Black Mountain artistic showpiece with the two mural walls, is also distinctive in that it offers a fully equipped professional pottery teaching studio not attached to an educational or municipal institution or commercial clayworks.  The Black Mountain Center for the Arts is proud to open this exceptional opportunity to the general public to learn and experiment with an arts and crafts form that is one of the oldest known to humankind.