You can find them at Target (Thank you, Magnolia), Joann's, and Macy's. Pots are in. And in a big way. Rustic, country-fied, modern and suspended in 70s retro macrame pot hangers.
But where can you find something truly unique and customized? Is there a skilled ceramist anywhere around Wellington? Probably just a few in the alcoves of Loxahatchee turning their potter's wheels. That's not to say that a skilled potter couldn't find a start here in Wellington though.
Especially for one young man whose mother demanded that he do something more productive with his time besides staring at his computer screen.
Sometimes your own advice can come back to haunt you.
I told my teenage son (and the other three sons for that matter) that he needed to create something 3-dimensional in real time that we could see with our eyes and hold in our palms.
At the time, the choices in high school were to take wood shop, machine shop, some kind of visual art, or cooking. But he wasn't interested in those hobbies.
So he signed up for a pottery elective. And took to it like it was the latest version of Nintendo or X-Box or today's Fortnite.
At first, the only tangible thing my son brought home was a lot of red and grey dust on his pants. But soon his classroom creations began to line up on every dresser. Then they were scattered all over the house on end tables and shelves like confetti. Set high on top of the kitchen cupboards. They were lumpy and misshapen, bearing oddly colored glazes. Pitchers had disproportionate handles. Dishes had uneven edges. But with each passing month, the pieces grew more attractive and artistic. More refined.
Graduation came and went and my son headed to NYC to major in business, not knowing what field to pursue. But with each semester, he enrolled in fewer classes. Until, much to my dismay, he discontinued school entirely. And this is where my words of advice came back to haunt me.
That high school elective had sparked a career, albeit a tricky one to navigate. A season in upstate New York with a kiln and small shed resulted in a portfolio of pots and a possibility of apprenticeship. Eventually he finally found his way to a pottery studio membership in Queens. That is where his collection of functional pottery, like lamps, chess sets and vases blossomed so that he attracted a major boutique hotel. After his first big order he needed to find his own work space and collaborated with a well-followed sculptor to open their own studio in the old Brooklyn navy shipyard.
His company Episode has produced lamps and ice buckets for prestigious hotels in the Caymens and New Orleans. Not bad for a self-taught artist. Each family member this Christmas received a beautiful brown Petrie lamp with the most beautiful New York stamped hardware seen on any fixture. These are nothing like the China-made versions found in Marshall's or Home Goods.
The humble high school elective has come back to compensate and reward not only my son, but his family and more and more of the art-appreciative public. I've let go of the idea of college and stopped nagging my 26-year old son. It's about time I followed in his father's parental philosophy and, "Let the boy do what he loves and wants to do, for goodness sake!"
Good advice, indeed!
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