The Best Thing in North Carolina Last Week
The best thing that happened in North Carolina last week was Woodfire NC, a conference hosted by STARworks, an arts-centered community business and education center, and the North Carolina Pottery Center, both in the historic Seagrove pottery region. The conference sought to “explore all aspects of wood-firing and examine its relevance in historical, ethical, environmental and aesthetic contexts," according to the Woodfire NC program.
As conferences go, this was a rather small gathering, but by no means inconsequential. In fact, some of the ceramic field’s most respected potters, artists, scholars, writers, and speakers were not just there, but having a blast. Josh Speers, Studio Potter's membership director, was zooming back and forth from venue to studio to museum incognito as @themotopotter (image above), and I repped SP as a sponsor alongside fellow publications, The Log Book and Ceramics Monthly. I was pleased to see our journal's legacy of publishing on wood-firing highlighted by Sequoia Miller, who used several of our back issues in his lecture, “Dig Tunnels Deep and Store Grain: Woodfiring Dialogues in the US.” (image below).
On Thursday evening, all gathered for some good ol’ fashioned Carolina barbeque and beer at an opening reception at the Pottery Center, where wonderful conversations sparked—as they continued to do the entire weekend—like one I had with the fabulous Magdalene Odundo. I was a mere intern at SP in 2008 when SP's then-Editor Mary Barringer interviewed Odundo at Harvard for “The Body Issue.” I was awed then, not only by her work, but also by her patient and direct way of speaking. She had the same ease in her voice at the barbeque, but this time I was more at ease in the breezy, rural North Carolina summer evening. We were surrounded by the hum of potters reconnecting for the first time in months or years, or celebrating the completion of the many kiln firings that went on during the pre-conference events.
The following three days of events at STARworks were packed (like a teaching kiln) with presentations by veteran leaders in the field, like Mark Hewitt, Louise Cort, Odundo, Ben Owen III, Jack Troy, Coll Minogue, Linda Christianson, Bernie Pucker, and the list goes on. Next generation leaders like Josh Copus, Simon Levin, Lindsay Oesterritter, Kate Johnston, Naomi Dalglish, Perry Haas, David Peters, Tara Wilson, and Ashwini Bhat contributed their intelligence, energy, and humor throughout the conference. Presentations included subjects like environmental ethics, wild clay, the importance of place-based resources and heritage, glaze and color, and money, followed by formal and informal discussions. Keep an eye out for future articles on these subjects in the pages of SP!
The conference included a stellar exhibition of wood-fired pots and sculpture (see above), but the main visual spectacle occurred Saturday evening amid local beer consumption, wafting scents of food-truck tacos and barbeque, and bluegrass beats:
Click HERE to learn more about Ingrid Allik’s fire sculpture!
Share
