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"The tide of popular interest in artist-potters continues to rise. Ten years ago none of us really expected to earn more than a decent income to support a life-style of our own independence and self-discovery. In the new rise of interest, studio potters are expected to become educators. For no matter how high the degree of "art" gained in colleges and universities, the processes in any given pottery workshop have to be learned directly through all the senses of body and spirit."
My first genuine interest in pottery as serious work came at Berea College in Kentucky. The craft arts, while respected and fostered, were not considered "professional." Graduates rarely became craftsmen (...the traditional split between higher education and what I now want to call higher-living…). That the studio potter exists now with such a firm hold and in so many numbers is a cause for wonder, but also celebration and alarm. We celebrate the fact that he can be; yet we remain alarmed at the general fragility of his individual existence day to day. It perhaps is the business of the individual potter to live dangerously, not only on the margin of his profit but on the edge of his own creative exploration in the potter's art.
At Rising Fawn we have taken many students. Originally, on a tiny government grant, I trained three local people to work in my shop. One dropped out during the training program, one continued to be employed in my shop for five years, and one still remains almost ten years! This was the beginning.
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