Mudslinger Pottery 2011 Newsletter
Written 01-01-2011

 Well – we made it through another year.  I look at the calendar and see all names that have been scribbled in all the little squares, day after day and month after month.  I’m astonished by the journey that I have been traveling.  So many people and so many stories have come through the doors of Mudslinger Pottery.  January 6^th is Mudslinger’s 5^th birthday.  Five years ago, my father in-law (Byron Moore) told me, “you’re doing a good thing – it’ll take at least 5 years to get established.”  Whew!  It seemed like a very long time ago, but then I can remember years earlier, wondering if I would always be stuck in this string of one dead end job after another.  I’d drive along in my Comcast van trying to encourage myself that someday I’d be able to make Art and to be what I’m REALLY supposed to be. 

 It’s now been 3 ½ years since I told Comcast to . . . well you can imagine.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I left a secure good paying job, to have my pay cut drastically and live by faith that people were going to walk through my door so that I could help them forget about their stress for a little while and play in the mud, and then they’d give me money so that I could keep helping other people play in the mud.  By the magic and button pressing of Quick-Books, I can say that in 2010 I have had over 300 people come into my little studio for a GetAway Day in the Clay, not including my regular students.  Since I opened Mudslinger Pottery I have taken at least 800 people by the hand (both GetAway participants and regular students) and helped them experience making something beautiful out of a lump of clay.  It usually doesn’t take long for people to realize that they are getting much more than a little piece of pottery, something that is difficult to express in words. 

 Part of my business philosophy is to try and focus on others.  My thought has been that, if I can help others to make art, then I can also make art too.  If you have been to my studio you will not only notice pottery but also paintings, drawings, and sculptures.  I think that what I love is the “act” of creating, more than possessing what I create.  My shelves aren’t really over flowing with pottery, paintings, pastels and sculptures, but it’s a good feeling when someone appreciates what you have created, and that thing finds a good home with them.  It’s difficult possessing anything - really, you just try and take care of it and make it better while it’s in your care, then let it go. 

 I’ve also discovered or realized that, much of what my art has become is my students.  I really enjoy helping people create and express themselves artistically.  It’s always a good day when a student comes into the studio with a book, drawing or photograph and says, “Can I make something like this?”  Then we do it.  One of my students said a couple years ago, “When I walk past the things I’ve made in my house, it makes me smile.”  So I guess, most of my creativity is expensed or used up by trying to contribute to helping other people create, rather than creating things to possess myself.  Things are nice, but they can’t compare with the feeling of helping someone build their own self-confidence in doing something that they thought they never could do. 

 So is Mudslinger Pottery Established?  I don’t know.  I’m still here, even in this market.  I just bought a new calendar to hang on the wall to scribble in more names.  I look to the New Year ahead and think to myself, “WHAT THE HELL am I DOING!”  Where are those names going to come from?  Who will they be?  Where will they come from?  When will that big commission finally come in?  How am I going to be able to keep up with my responsibilities and expenses?   Sometimes I’ll suggest to people that, I’m helping them do something that they could never do on their own.  Well – I guess that, by Faith I’ll keep going, and He will keep helping me do something that I could never do on my own.  The POTTER, helping the potter, helping people to be a potter.