“I was hooked,” she said.
Her dad was an art teacher and in high school she would spend all her free time practicing on a wheel in his class.
The love she had for the art form was rekindled when her husband purchased her a kiln and one block of clay for Christmas one year.
“I was out there at 3 in the morning sometimes because I’d have a dream or something,” she said.
She reunited herself with the medium by reading, observing and practicing different techniques until she developed her own methods. For the last eight years she’s been selling her work at various festivals, café’s, farmers markets and gift shops throughout Nova Scotia.
“Following my fathers example as a teacher, I have felt comfortable sharing my experience with others and have enjoyed teaching various pottery classes over the past few years.”
But one of the problems she found with trying to offer classes out of her home in Lansdowne is it is farther out than most people want to travel. So she started searching for something more central that she could offer classes out of. That’s when she discovered that some of the space that the NSCAD students had been using last year that was provided by the Town of New Glasgow was left empty.
While the town still plans to try to get more artists in residence to work out of the space in the future, until that happens they’ve worked out an arrangement with Allan for her to teach classes there. Other parts of the building are used to teach music classes and a youth art program.
”We are thrilled to have Carey offer her pottery lessons out of our art studio space. The space has the potential to be centre of artistic activity with music lessons, the community art room lessons and now the upcoming pottery classes taking place there,” sais Geralyn MacDonald. New Glasgow`s Director of Community Development. “It is exciting to see so much creativity happening.”
MacDonald credits Tabitha Coleman, Coordinator of the Community Art Room for organizing a great offering of artists to mentor the children in art room program including Carey and many other great artists in our region.
“Using the studio space for creative endeavours provides great opportunities for our residents to explore their interest in art,” MacDonald said.
There will be various classes offered which are designed to introduce a variety of building techniques and to inspire future clay creativity. For more information call: (902) 396-3915 or visit https://www.facebook.com/muddymepottery/
