I believe Standard’s 112 is a derivative of Charles’ cone 6 clay, and it fires beautifully.” came to visit the studio and told Charles he could make the same clay cheaper and better,” she recalls. Wiest tells the story of how she came to know Standard Ceramic. Counts, a Kentucky native, was an advocate for the preservation of traditional Appalachian crafts and a noted potter who mixed his own clay bodies. Inspired by these concepts, she went on to work with Charles Counts, at Rising Fawn Pottery in Georgia. “It was so wonderful to be in a place where it was a way of life, where the object is produced by a community of people dedicated to the work.” “The clay was mined in the countryside and brought to the potters in Kyoto, who worked in the master studios,” she says. don’t know their own history.’ I have tried to learn more about our country and the world through learning more about pottery.” Wiest was intrigued by the organic process of the manufacture of pottery in Kyoto, based on the Japanese Mingei, or “folkcraft” movement. Something he said has been with me ever since. “While there,” she says, “I had the good fortune to meet the famous English potter Bernard Leach and to have time with him. She points out that the UPS truck will go anywhere, but, “if you want something, you have to plan ahead!”Īs a young woman in the 1960s, fresh from college, she travelled to Kyoto, Japan to further her studies in clay. The availability of goods is not immediate. “Nature,” she says, “is often a challenging and difficult part of your day.” Time is not measured by the bustle of urban activity. The primarily rural lifestyle of the region presents obstacles to everyday life. “We are resourceful and resilient and we find ways to get things done with what we have on hand.” She cites the abundance of natural resources – timber, coal, clay – that becomes the raw material of an existence rooted in the earth. “We are a complex people,” Wiest says of her Appalachian neighbors. From her early training at Agnes Scott College, through studies in Japan and residency in Georgia, Wiest lives a quest for beauty that manifests in a lifetime of making and defining Appalachian art and culture. What is the value of a life in the arts? West Virginia potter Scottie Roberts Wiest has fifty years of experience selling and making functional pottery and plenty to say about a lifestyle embedded in nature and community in her native Appalachia.
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