
Amy Oliver, Instructor
Sunday, May 18, 2025: 9 AM -3 PM
$205 – price includes materials fee and lunch
Students will learn how to make and use sand as a hump mold for clay, create their dishes, add slip and carve through the surface to create their design. Students may collect their fired pottery from Monkeytown Pottery Studio on a date to be determined. Alternatively, pottery can be shipped directly to them upon request.
Amy Oliver
I have been a potter for over 30 years, my focus is on form and function as well as surface design. I mix and use colored slips on bare clay to carve and sculpt illustrations, often featuring nature, especially trees and mountains, and many recurring animal characters from the woods and fields of Bluemont. I strive to make beautifully crafted functional art.
In college, I studied ceramics and drawing, as well as taking many, many art history classes. I also get a lot of inspiration from my friends and family, my mother was my first and continuous art teacher and I have learned so much and have gotten so much inspiration from my friends in Loudoun county, especially local Bluemonter and artist, Maria Nicklin. I was also blessed to have apprenticed with Charlottesville potters’ Hawksbill Pottery, during college and after.
I have always been fascinated by pots that tell a story and the human desire throughout history to tell a story. With each pot I make, I make a unique and original story. Some of the characters you might find is the tortoise or turtle, many owls, ravens and birds, bears and deer, foxes, bunnies and horses. I love to have them interact with each other as if there are wonderful things happening, right outside our windows in the wild, maybe there is! I also love to add dinosaurs, and many mythical “monsters” to the stories as well.
It just depends on the pot as to what you see. I can tell you what the characters mean to me, but it’s up to the viewer to decide the story.