Help Me Create My Pottery Studio

I've been a studio potter for well over thirty years, but that came to an end this past October because of an accidental fire in a space I was leasing. That's why I need your help.

I've been blessed to receive teaching residencies in schools and studios since then, and through the help of friends I've been able to occasionally use their wheels or kilns. One friend is storing two of my kilns in an old van! My studio stuff is everywhere right now. In order to continue to teach and create, I need my own place.

Jan and I have staked out an outline of a studio in our yard. There's just enough room and I have my permit to build! We envision it standing there and need to begin as soon as possible. All we need are funds. If anyone who ever took a lesson from me (and learned to throw immediately!), bought a piece of functional pottery that's still beloved, treasures one of my face jugs they purchased, or watched and enjoyed a pottery demonstration gave an amount to this cause, I'd be able to continue on.

Another cause you'd support is the history of the face jugs that I create inspired directly from the funerary practices of my African ancestors, a practice that was brought to the American South by enslaved people. Yes, there were slave potters, one of whom was an ancestor of mine.

Recently, at a studio in Virginia, I taught a student to center clay and  throw a good pot with confidence. She told me she'd been taking lessons on and off for six years and was about to give up. This, along with teaching an unknown segment of history, is why I do what I do. I hope you'll want to be a part of it.

Thanks so much and stay centered now,
Jim McDowell, the Black Potter