Turtle Island Pottery Old Fort, NC tipottery@gmail.com
“My greatest urge is to create from the very stuff of Earth. Crystals growing, lava flowing and plants blooming are meaningful forms of creation for me. These are activities that occurred when the earth was created and are still going on today. The crafting of ceramic objects involves all of these same processes using Earth, Air, Fire and Water.” Maggie Jones
Altering wheel thrown forms and sculpting clay is my main focus. I use a white stoneware clay and beginning with wheel thrown forms I alter by stretching with my fingertips, similar to the pinch pot technique, in stages and then add details. I enjoy applying a variety of color and texture with glazes by brush or dipping. I often refer to antique pottery for new ideas that stem from the everlasting, pleasing, forms made so long ago. My husband, Freeman Jones, often starts the forms, collaborates with ideas and does a lot of maintenance and so-called “grunt-work” loading kilns and such. He is my consultant. Freeman's experience in ceramics came from an in-depth work-study in the ceramics department at college. In 1969 he left with a degree in Art, specializing in sculpture and two concentrations, one in writing and the other in theater.
I have been a working potter since 1972 at the age of nineteen. I have no formal education past high school. At age fifteen, I began learning the craft of making pottery under the direction of my Junior High School art teacher. My father set up equipment in our basement and we learned together. By my High School graduation I was proficient at wheelwork and became a full-time apprentice for a studio potter in Tarrytown, NY. In 1972 at age nineteen, I opened my own studio and fired with a gas kiln at the fledgling Farmington Valley Art Center in Avon, CT. I also taught and fired another gas kiln for a pottery co-op there.
My ceramics experience or education involves participating in many workshops all over the country as listed in my resume’. I have fired all types of kilns: wood, oil, gas and electric. I have used all types of clays including many locally found clays and minerals. I have built several kilns of my own. I have fired earthenware, raku, stoneware and porcelain, salted, pit-fired and other techniques. I have mixed my own glazes since before the advent of calculators and computers and now work with a wide variety of commercially prepared glazes, my own recipes, and some local materials.
In 1984 I was a special student invited by Paul Soldner at Scripps College in Claremont, CA with privileges the same as a graduate student working towards an MFA in ceramic art, although my only credits were the experience and what I learned. Soldner expressed to me that having me in the studio along with his MFA students was a "shot in the arm". I was an example, for these graduates, of an artist making a living with her craft. I also took a watercolor class with head of the art department, Tucker Cooke, at UNC Asheville in 2000, which gave me a new set of tools involving color.
I have been in the mountains of NC since 1977 with my husband, Freeman Jones, and since 1980 we have made a living with this craft. We both taught at Blue Ridge Technical College for several years and also maintained a studio at home. While raising our two children, the pottery produced was mostly functional stoneware items that we sold at craft fairs and supplied many shops and galleries. We still make that line of functional wares. Since 2000 we have also been producing one of a kind, artfully sculpted works. In 2007 we opened our showroom in Old Fort where the whole spectrum of our work can be viewed and purchased.
Maggie Jones TurtleIslandPottery.com A CV is available here.