With the annual Maine Pottery Tour set to take place the weekend of May 3 and 4, the new Harpswell Clay Workers collective will gather to display and sell pottery, offer demonstrations and share knowledge about their beloved craft.
One sunny day in April, the group met for the first time in the crowded studio of Susan Horowitz and Gail Kass at Ash Cove Pottery, which will host the tour stop.
The group formed to provide camaraderie and support, Horowitz said. It has almost a dozen members, some of whom have studios open to the public.
Kass said the beauty of Harpswell inspires her. She works at a wheel where she can see the tidal Ash Cove, several feet from Horowitz, her wife, who views the cove from a different window.
Orr’s Island ceramic artist Catherine Gibson, of Gibson Studios, agreed. “Being within view of the ocean, it definitely stimulates creativity, because it’s always changing,” she said. “It definitely feeds my soul.”
“It slows you down and it makes you go inside,” Margie MacDougal, of M & M Pots, said. “And that’s where I really work from.”
The potters work with different clays and techniques, creating a wide variety of products. Several craft one-of-a-kind pieces as unique as the artists themselves.
Potters use “low-fire” or “high-fire” processes, altering the temperature at which they fire the clay to achieve different goals.
“I love shape,” MacDougal said, holding a tall, angular pitcher. “I love straight lines.” She often glazes her pieces at Portland Pottery using a high-fire process. “And a lot of pottery is the exact kind of drying,” she said. “You spend a lot of time doing the shape, cutting it out, and leaving it and then doing something else.”
Phyllis O’Neill displayed a piece that began with building coils one at a time, she said, thinking about the shape while brushing on layers with a paddle and adding finger marks, then adding more coils and finally using a low-fire process.
Patricia Ferrara Fuchs, of Lowell’s Cove Studio, works only in porcelain. For one of her pieces, she incorporated a Greek vase or column that a friend found in the ocean.
Horowitz, meanwhile, produces what she calls “functional ware,” while Stamey said she crafts high-fire stoneware items that “people will use every day.”
Emma Raine Maasch, of Zaftig Yenta pottery, seeks to make their pottery affordable and “allow people to integrate it into their everyday lives.”
“I aspire to make these grand pieces one day,” said Raine Maasch, a younger, gender-fluid artist who hopes to someday be a full-time potter. Raine Maasch also works with Horowitz to produce the “Double Dip Dinghy” that was featured in Coastal Living magazine several years ago. Horowitz said the popularity of the item “hit us into the middle class for a little bit!”
The Harpswell Clay Workers will participate in the Maine Pottery Tour from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 4, at Ash Cove Pottery, 75 Ash Cove Road, Harpswell. The local stop will feature demonstrations at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. both days, as well as items for sale and clay to play with. For more information about the statewide event, go to mainepotterytour.org.
