Time to make pots!
Red Gate Pottery near the north Georgia mountain town of Blairsville is the culmination of many years of planning and working toward running my own pottery studio. After retiring from teaching high school art and pottery in the small town of Tallapoosa, Georgia and teaching ceramics as an adjunct instructor at the University of West Georgia, I moved to the mountains. My pottery studio is surrounded by the natural scenic beauty of the southern Appalachians and includes a showroom constructed of an 1800s-era dovetail-notched log corn crib that was moved from the farm where I grew up in Alabama.
I make wheel-thrown stoneware pottery and fire it to around 2400 degrees F. in a gas reduction kiln that I built at the studio. My work is utilitarian, but I also attempt to give each piece individual character. I am influenced and inspired by the work of Japanese potters in the tradition of Shoji Hamada, and most notably by American potter Warren MacKenzie who was an apprentice at the Leach Pottery in England before returning to his home in Minnesota to teach generations of potters the philosophy of making simple, useful pots.
My studio name, Red Gate Pottery, and the studio emblem that is stamped on my pots refer to the Japanese torii which is a gate that connects the mundane and sacred worlds. For me, the torii symbolism represents the simplicity and almost spiritual nature of handmade pottery, and coincidentally resembles the letter "A" which stands for my last name.
