04-27-11-pottery-festival.jpgWhat young kid can pass up a rain puddle, some nearby dirt and the opportunity to fashion that sublime art creation of youth, the almighty mud pie? Such earthy fun is worth the almost certain unhappy parental reaction; a right of passage in childhood.

Yet some children never give up their love for playing in the dirt and grow into adults who turn their passion for mud into creative careers as potters. The wares of many talented potters who perhaps slipped into the mud and got all fi red up about clay will be on display during North Carolina’s largest pottery festival, the Sanford Pottery Festival. The Special 10th Anniversary Event & Celebration of N.C. Wines take place on Saturday, April 30, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, May 1, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Dennis A. Wicker Civic Center, 1801 Nash St. in Sanford.

“In North Carolina, we take our pottery very seriously,” said event organizer and potter Don Hudson. “There are probably about 2,000 potters in North Carolina. Our festival draws potters from all over North Carolina and beyond.”

The Sanford Pottery Festival has its roots in the Seagrove Pottery Festival, explained Hudson. “The Seagrove Pottery Festival is the granddaddy of them all. It is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary event in November. It was created by a gentleman named Richard Gillson. (Gillson passed away in 2008.) His pottery studio was named Holly Hill, and he created the Seagrove Pottery Festival. I worked with Richard for 11 years to help him produce the Seagrove Pottery Festival. Richard encouraged us to create a festival in Sanford to help project a positive image of the Seagrove-area potteries into the Triangle. He always said if it were promoted correctly, that the Sanford Pottery Festival would be bigger than the Seagrove festival. When it was fi rst held in 2002, it did become the largest pottery event in a state that loves its pottery.”

Hudson offers a variety of reasons for its growth and notes that 50,000 different people have visited over the past nine years, representing 98 of N.C.’s 100 counties and every state in the union.

“For one, Sanford has a great location,” Hudson said. “We’re right in the middle of everything, and great roads connect us to all the areas around us. We’re easy to reach, and there is a whole lot of free parking on paved lots. The amazing thing is that people who love pottery come out even in bad weather,” he said.

The festival features 110 oversized booths and 30,000 square feet of tents in addition to the civic center space. Yet the pottery festival is not all pottery.

“The goal for the festival is to pull together the very best selection of North Carolina pottery found in one place,” said Hudson. “Twenty percent of the booths are for non-pottery traditional arts and crafts. This goes back to Richard Gillson, who always believed that a pottery festival should have some non-pottery, for people who are dragged along by pottery fanatics, in the areas of jewelry, clothing accents, gourmet chocolates and salsas, sweet breads, leather, woodwork — all the basic non-pottery traditional arts.”

The event is also very child friendly, notes Hudson.

“We have a ‘paint your own raku’ that is tremendously popular with children. There’s going to be the National Guard climbing wall there as well, another tiein with the military. During the festival, there will be shuttle service to historic downtown Sanford. There is a bicycle race on Saturday with lots of children’s activities at Depot Park,” he continued.

Hudson views the event as an opportunity for Sanford to shine as a community in the midst of the military’s ongoing BRAC efforts. The festival is repeating its highly successful military appreciation feature of free admission with a valid military ID, offered at the festival’s first Christmas show this past December, and hinted at a future event in Cumberland County.

“We are very definitely looking at creating an event in Fayetteville. The Cumberland County population is drawn from all over the U.S.A., and many of them are world travelers, and they have a tendency to want to know something about what goes on where they are stationed at any given time. And they send souvenirs back to friends and family all over the country and all over the world. What better opportunity to popularize North Carolina pottery on a national basis, than to make the military aware of what is in their own back yard!”

The wine-tasting event, held in a separate venue, features N.C. wines, “from the sweetest sweet, to the driest dry,” Hudson said. For $10 admission, attendees receive a free glass and may sample from different wines and then purchase them by the glass, bottle or case. A selection of health-conscious food will also be available at the festival.

The timing of the festival is ideal for Mother’s Day and graduation gifts, he noted.

“We focus on Mother’s Day,” said Hudson. “Bring your mother out. Buy her something for Mother’s Day. We have all sorts of gifts anywhere from $10-20. We have a very broad selection of pottery. There are actually thousands upon thousands of moderately priced gift items that can be used in the house and passed down from generation to generation as much of the pottery is. We also have high-end pottery. We have had things sell at the festival for $15,000.”

Two of the potters that regularly attend the festival are Phil Morgan of Seagrove and Olivia D. Dowdy of Wagram.

Morgan established his pottery in 1973 after determining he did not want to work in a routine that required a suit and tie. He fi rst discovered pottery at Montgomery Tech (now Montgomery Community College) and is known as a “world-master crystalline potter.” According to his website, www. philmorganpottery.org, “Phil’s cystalline jewels are in museums across the globe — from the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., to Europe’s Wedgwood Museum. Phil and his crystalline works of art have been featured in a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Orlando Sentinel and on ABC TV’s Good Morning America and CTV’s Good Morning Canada.”

“I’m in my 39th year and have been doing crystalline since 1973,” said Morgan. “I strive to do the original art. I do not use computers. I mix my own porcelain. I mix my own glazes. That’s kind of what makes me different than everyone else. I started in the time when there weren’t a lot of companies producing clay and glazes, and I learned to do my own, and I still do it the old way I did way back in the ‘70s. I take pride in that I only allow the best ones that survive through the fi ring into the showroom.”

Morgan has attended all but the very first Sanford Pottery Festival.

“I’ve been proud to be in that show every year since. It’s a wonderful pottery event. And if people come to that show and they don’t find pottery they like, then they didn’t like pottery to begin with. It’s a great time for people to meet the potter, the potter takes time to explain what they do and talk to them and they more or less become friends, not just customers. I would just like to invite everyone to come to the show and have a good time.”

Dowdy reflects fondly back on those mud-pie making times of her youth.

“As soon as it rained, I was outside in the mud,” said Dowdy, who has been working in mixed media for the past 20 years, but claims pottery as her first love. Her wire and raku jewelry has been featured in Step by Step Wire Jewelry. “There’s something about being an adult where we can just get dirty, and it’s okay.”

“I didn’t go to college until later in life. I got a visual-arts degree, and I liked everything I worked with, but I didn’t feel like I could make a living using my skill that would let me be a happy person.”

Dowdy then transferred from Sandhills Community College to UNC-Pembroke. “I was wondering, how would I make a living doing something in the arts, and I stumbled upon the pottery class. I saw Ceramics I, which is hand building with clay. When I went into that class, I mean I fell absolutely in love with the whole process. I felt like I had found my place. It’s a humbling medium to work with because you know what you can and cannot do with clay. You can push it, and it pushes back. If you don’t follow part of the rules, you will work multiple hours and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I have the greatest respect for clay. The clay just feels good in your hands. After you manipulate and pull it and do all these things to it, you get something wonderful, something beautiful, something that speaks volumes just because it came from the earth.”

Dowdy’s mantra, posted on her site at www.etsy.com/people/Odddesignsnc#, says it all: “My soul would be empty if I did not do art!”

Which involves, no doubt, playing in the “mud.”

Admission to the festival is $5, children 14 and under are admitted free and anyone with a valid military ID, active or retired, will be admitted free with an adult guest. Admission to the wine-tasting event is $10 extra for adults 21 and over.

For more information on The Sanford Pottery Festival, visit www. sanfordpottery.org.

Photo: Olivia D. Dowdy from Wagram, N.C. specializes in pottery and raku jewelry, like the piece shown above.

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