Meet the Artists

The Spruce Pine Potters Market is an annual ceramics sale, held in early October in Spruce Pine North Carolina.  The event is organized and put on by the thirty or so potters and sculptors whose work you will see when you visit the market.  If you’ve been up to the mountains to visit some of the craft studios, you’ll recognize some friendly faces and meet a few new ones too.

If you’ve never been to the area, you might be surprised to learn there are so many craft studios and artists roaming these hills.  One might wonder why so many high caliber artists have been drawn here over the years, ending up in this little corner of western North Carolina.  As you look around you notice the natural beauty nestled between the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian. Then you visit the Penland School of Crafts and you see first hand why folks are drawn there.  Before long, you get a sense of the craft community that exists here, woven into the fabric of the small towns and valleys.  If you take your time and bring a map of the studios, you might notice there are more pottery kilns in the county than there are stoplights.

As the weekend of October 9th and 10th draws closer, we thought you might like to learn a little more about the artists participating in the Potters Market this year.  Some of these artists have been in the area for over thirty years and some have settled here in the last few.  We’ve asked them to share a little bit about themselves: how long have they lived here and what first brought them, what type of work do they do, what keeps them going when they’re not in the studio?  Over the next few weeks we’ll highlight the artists and share with you a little more of what you’ll find when you head to the mountains this fall.