towers.....

I also make towers with little metal doors.

The work......

My work varies but my "claim to fame" are my clay boxes with metal hinges that I fabricate from wire and solder.

The work......

Gallery....

Another thing that we needed to self reliant was to have a gallery. The most economical way to do that was to transform our carport. Once we can build another detached from the house it can become our sunroom.

Pete, man of many skills.....

Pete, my husband, is a very talented and resourceful man. We met in Basic Pottery at Olympic College in Bremerton Washington 35 years ago. We got married the day before we moved North Carolina. He put pottery aside to maintain an income to support our family. He is currently a web site developer.....self taught....and very good in this field. You can check out my web site. http://www.whiteoakartworks.com/ His skills save me lots of money. He also is a budding photographer.......once again...check out my web site. All but a few of the photos were taken by him........saves me lots of money once we got him the proper equipment.

Pete is one of my most valuable assets........besides the fact that I just love him to death.

A potter trying to survive in this economy.

So I've been told that one of the ways to survive as a craftsmen in today's world it to start a blog. As you have probably noticed I started my blog several months ago and then abandoned it only to be told again and again that a blog is a useful tool and I should pay attention to it regularly. I'm a baby boomer so all this tech stuff is foreign to me. I'm used to the face to face communication but what the hell........I will give it a shot and hopefully it will pay off.

Here is a short version of my story. I've been a potter for 35 years. For 25 years I have done crafts shows to make my living. As my work got better I got into better more expensive shows. It was good for a while but then the economy tanked and the sales were barely covering expenses. I wanted to find another avenue to sell my work so we decided to sell our house in Cary, NC and found four and half acres just outside of Durham boardering the Eno State Park. Here we are close to downtown and enough space for customer parking. To keep costs down we used existing structures. The tractor shed became my studio and a tall shed that housed travel trailor became my kiln shed. We have a great start.

Baby birds

I have a new little family in my studio. The nest is snuggled in on top of my five inch posts. Look closely and you can see two little beepers that have just hatched.

Now to keep the studio cat, Bud, from doing what he does best.

The drama begins.