Meet Charlie

My Story

How long have you been doing pottery and why did you begin?
I've been a potter here at Cracked Pot for about seven and a half years. I wanted to do pottery from when I was at Ohio State back in 19 or whenever it was. I had a friend that I went to high school with who was an art major at Ohio State, and she wanted me to come and learn how to throw pots. I never had an opportunity because I was so busy. So 45 years later, we moved to Bellefontaine. I always mentioned to my wife that one of these days, I'm going to learn how to throw pots. And she was looking in the newspaper and found out that Cracked Pot Studio existed. So, as a birthday present to me, she bought me lessons with Thelma and I had a wonderful time and I was hooked, and that was seven years ago, and it's been marvelous ever since.
What is the benefit of being a community potter?
The community potters here are a very unique blend of people. It's wonderful to be part of a studio where where you can come 24/7, whenever you want. You can come and you could do anything that you want here in the studio. You have complete access to all five rooms that are here, but everybody then can come. Everybody shares, we have monthly meetings where people bring in food, we share ideas. And it's incredible to see how people start out, possibly at a very beginning level, and then over a period of three or four years, they develop into this incredible, gifted artist, and we share ideas and we ask each other questions. I never tire of coming to the studio and looking around and seeing what people are doing. We have a plethora of truly creative people in this community, and it's a joy to be around them.
What is your favorite thing to make?
Wow… my favorite thing to make is changes.I go through spurts. One of the first things I made early on was a teapot, and this was in the Logan County Fair, and I had a good time making this. And I made several teapots, and then I got teapots out of my system, and then I went to all kinds of things. You know this, for instance, is a bowl that is carved heavily. I do a lot of carving. You're going to see a theme here. I like this dark, speckled clay. I like the blue color, and I like carving and imprinting the clay. And that was a time when I was making a lot of bowls. Currently, I'm working on casserole dishes.I've been working on this design, this concept, this technique, for a couple of years, off and on. I wanted to come up with something that a novice, a person who had never touched clay, could make, work on a project that they could build, then they would be very happy with to give away as a gift, or as a gift or whatever. Yeah, that's what we're working on now. In fact, I'm teaching, going to be teaching a couple classes, one next month in September, and then the following class in October. And again, for people who have touched clay, it's a lot of fun to come up with a concept. Now, this is a hand built item. This is not done on the wheel, so nobody needs to be afraid of that, just kind of things like that.
What is a challenge for you?
First of all, I love challenges. I just absolutely positively love sitting down with a piece of paper, and a bunch of pencils and start sketching different things out. I sketch out first what I want to see in my mind. Now, anybody who's been working with pottery knows that there's a big journey, a very long journey, from what you see on the paper to what you hold in your hand. Clay is a medium that is funky. It has its own personality. Sometimes they warp, sometimes they crack, you know, sometimes they bend. It's a big, big deal when you're trying to get from the concept to the finished product. But that's the part I love. I;m a woodworker, I have been for 45 years. So I make all of my own tools, you know, for the pottery, for the manipulation and the shaping of the pottery, and so that all comes into play here. It's just, it's, it's a challenge that says, I want to take it from the paper to something that I can put in my hand and I love that and I love teaching too.
Why would you recommend studios to others?
Crackpot is a very unique studio. We have all kinds of things to do, all different types of projects for all ability levels. We start with like a paint your own studio where you can buy a piece of bisqueware that is already fashioned and shaped, and then you simply take a brush and you paint the glazes on, and we fire it, and you know it's yours. And we go several different steps, all the way up to full fledged potter, where you come in and you cut off big lumps of clay, and you make beautiful things out of it, and everything in between. The facility that we have is very unique. We have five different rooms. All of these rooms have different responsibilities or different duties. I guess they should say that we perform in each one of the rooms. The amount of tools that Thelma Matthews has purchased is off the charts. She's always purchasing new equipment. She's always purchasing tools. We're always learning different things. Frequently during the course of the year, we have several different professional potters, professional artists who come in and teach classes. So there's always something to do here, and the camaraderie between 32 potters is amazing. Again. We have our meetings, and we get together and share ideas, and you never want for learning here.
You're always learning new things, always encouraged to try new things. We're always teaching classes. We're always coming up with new classes. and creativity in the studio is basically off the charts and that's why I love it here.