Surrendering to the Kiln: Ceramic Artist Sarah Wells Roland & The Village Potters Clay Center

In Conversation with Emily Chambers Sharpe

I’ll never tire of making beautiful pots, but making potters has become one of my deepest passions. — Sarah Wells Roland

Sarah Wells Rolland is the owner and founder of The Village Potters Clay Center in The River Arts District in Asheville, NC. Sarah is an instructor, mentor and professional ceramic artist. The Village Potters was completely destroyed by Hurricane Helene.

Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahwellsrolland and Facebook. Learn more about The Village Potters on their website and Instagram page @thevillagepotters, and support their efforts to rebuild their space at their GoFundMe page.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. A version of the conversation is available in the audio interview above.

Emily Chambers Sharpe: What forms the kind of art that you create, who you are, and the community that you work with?

Sarah Wells Roland: I am a decorative and functional potter, and I have also explored sculpture. I’ve been making pots since 1986. In 2011, my husband and I decided to form The Village Potters Clay Center, so I left my beautiful studio and went to Asheville with a collective of friends, and we created this clay center together. Because we have our own gallery, it has freed me up to explore even more with firing techniques and glaze techniques. And so my work has changed dramatically since 2011. 

At this point in my career, which is something like 38 years, I spend the majority of my time teaching. We have a mission to raise the next generation of potters, and we have tried very diligently to provide [an educational] alternative for people that want to be ceramic artists, because higher education is so expensive. So they come and study with us, they spend one to three years, and we not only help them hone their skillsets but also help them find their own body of work and teach them about business and the arts. Those are the things that I’m super passionate about right now. I’ll never tire of making beautiful pots, but making potters has become one of my deepest passions.

ECS: What was your own training and experience?

SWR: When I first touched clay, I was actually in a production crafts program at a community college here in Haywood County. I studied with Gary Clontz for two years, and he is still a mentor and a good friend to me. Over the years, I have studied with other potters and watched their techniques, and tried to bring some of the techniques that I’ve studied from others into my body of work. So at this point in my career, I have a lot in my tool chest that I can pull on.

ECS: Tell me about what it’s like to do art as a part of a collective. How did you find each other? How do you work together? What have you learned in these many years of doing this in a community?

SWR: We’re a very diverse group. There are seven full-time resident potters, and they are really the collective, the group of people that do all the workings of The Village Potters Clay Center. I do have a hired operations manager, and she has an assistant, but that is a lot of the administrative work. 

This group of seven potters, which has changed slightly over the years, basically have a commitment to one another to not only look to our own interests but to look to the interests of the whole group and to each other individually. We have these shared passions, which are making pots and teaching and mentoring. All the people in the core team are completely 100% committed to the collective. 

We support one another, and we’re committed to each other’s success. We all have an agreement to not hold on to any misunderstanding or unforgiveness.

The collective has four showrooms—well, had four showrooms—where we sold our work, and that was one of the sustaining elements for the group of artists that do all the teaching. Then we had a teaching center where all the instructors were teachers or mentors, and we had even more staff that are people we raised to be professionals and are now on our teaching staff. We’re not a co-op. We’re not a place where people have to pay dues and things like that. My husband and I own it, and we carry the lease and pay all the bills and do all that, then the collective comes together and runs the operation, and it works really, really well. Everybody who comes to the showroom finds out about not just one of us, but who we are as a collective.

ECS: I noticed that in how you presented the work online. There was a sense that you can see who we all are, all of our work. What gave you that idea? What made you want to go this way as opposed to another way?

SWR: Well, I had the idea in 1998, which was when I first had an apprentice, Amy Jo Gelber, and she is an incredible professional potter now. Bringing her into my studio, working with her, and helping her rise into the fullness of what she wanted to do with clay and had a huge impact on me. So in 1998, I wrote down the plan for the Villages, and then all I did was just talk to my friends constantly, and we looked for a building. It took a long time to look for a building, but we found one in 2011, and that’s when we went to work to outfit the space and get a pottery in there.

Several of the commitments that we have that work so beautifully is that we don’t compete with one another. We support one another, and we’re committed to each other’s success. We all have an agreement to not hold onto any misunderstanding or unforgiveness. We work on things and keep our relationships really current and fresh, and that has worked great in the collective and basically has made everybody feel heard, supported, and cared about. Something about how we do that for each other just translates to how we do it with everybody who studies with us. So when people come in to study, they feel safe, they feel supported, and they feel encouraged because we start with doing that for one another in the core team.

ECS: You’ve experienced a huge disruption after Hurricane Helene flooded Asheville, and particularly this beautiful location that you'd worked many years to establish. What do you feel comfortable sharing with us about that experience?

SWR: Well, I’m happy to share about it. I think the flood happened something like September 28th. We’re more than a month out now, so it doesn't feel quite as traumatic to talk about. When we opened the place in 2011, it was just a greasy little shelled facility, and we leased 2,500 square feet and we spent almost ten months, I believe it was, outfitting it into a pottery. So we pressure-washed, we painted, we built walls, we put in lighting, we turned what was a shell into a beautiful business. 

Over those years, up until the flood, we just kept expanding. We would use whatever profits the company made and get another studio, for example, for our advanced studies program. Up until 2017, we took every bit of the money and put it back into the facility and grew larger. So we started at 2,500 square feet, and then we were at 14,000 square feet, housing three teaching studios, seven resident studios, four showrooms, a clay company, and 17 kilns, 37 wheels. A lot of stuff. Every bit of it went under 24 and a half feet of water. So after going home in shock, seeing it after the waters receded, I sat around the house and ate two-quart sizes of ice cream.

ECS: It's good for what ails you, right?

SWR: I mean, it’s part of my process, but then I said, I gotta stop eating ice cream, it’s time to rise up and do something. So I called a meeting with our collective and a couple of our neighbors who have arts businesses next to us, and we gathered at a friend’s house. This is at a time when no one had power, no one had water. But we gathered at their house, and I just said, “okay, who wants to move forward?” Because you don’t know in a crisis like that. You don’t know when somebody’s decided I’m going to pivot and do something differently. But everybody that was at the table said, “Let’s do it, let’s go forward.” 

I do expect that wherever we reestablish, we’ll all come together and heal from this trauma.

So who we are— I can’t say this enough—is not defined by me. I have a big influence on who we are, but who we are is defined by the group of people, by all of us who are trying to make it happen. We decided to go forward with what is a humongous, daunting task, which is to do it again. But we have infrastructure in place that we didn't have in 2011. We have supporters all over the country. When COVID-19 hit, I did this thing called Vessels of Hope, and I went onto social media and I demonstrated making pots, and I made 500 vessels with two and a half pounds of clay, each one being different, and we sold them for $100, and people bought them all over the country, and they learned about it because I was live-streaming it. We then went to teaching online because I realized I love the camera, and I never knew that. That all prepared us for this time, because all those people who supported us with Vessels of Hope, now that we’ve been flooded, have supported us in an even greater way. With this undergirding of support, we just feel confident that we can do it.

ECS: I think that’s really an amazing perspective. That’s impressive that the collective sees that direction. I love that it’s not just you yourself. 

SWR: I wouldn't do it if it was just me. It would not even be possible. The first 25 years of my career was just me, and when my daughter went off to college, I was like, you know, if I keep on this path, I’m going to be isolated in my private studio for the rest of my life. So that’s when the idea of the Village came together. 

The reason I would never do it as just me is, first of all, I’m not equipped to do it alone, I need the whole group. I am a visionary, a dreamer, and a highly creative teacher. I don’t have a lot of administrative skills, but I surround myself with people who do. There’s no way that I could carry the mentoring program of 14 emerging potters. So it’s not, “Let’s go to the Village and study with Sarah Wells Rowland.” It’s, “Let's go to the Village and study with a group of professionals that can help me find my way in my dream.”

ECS: I have often experienced or seen that people are drawn to art after a disaster. I know it’s still early days after Hurricane Helene, but do you think that is going to be part of the healing process for your community? And how do you think what you offer may help others do with their own kind of feelings around the disaster?

SWR: That’s a great question. I don’t know… I mean, I can’t imagine the amount of people that have shown up. We loaded ten or nine 1,026-foot trucks of equipment in, you know, two feet of mud and loaded them up and took them over to a friend’s barn, and we’re doing cleanup there. Every single day, we have volunteers there helping. We have so much support, both financially and helping with the work that it’s really, really clear to me that we’re going to move forward.

Now, in our teaching facility, because we are genuinely plugged into the success of others, lots of people come and study with us and experience a lot of healing because they are involved in a creative venue, and they’re working with people that believe in them. I can’t even tell you how many times people have said that this experience here has been life-altering for them. You know, I don't see why it wouldn’t because somehow the way we create the culture, it just makes it a safe place. 

I do expect that wherever we reestablish, we’ll all come together and heal from this trauma. I think we will. And this is a traumatic experience. Not only did we lose our business, and that’s a very big deal, but people’s houses were washed down the river. I mean, it’s just unbelievable when you see a roofline of five houses just going down Swannanoa River. It’s so devastating. But I do think there's going to be a lot of healing, Emily. I really do. And God works in amazing ways. We think that it takes, two people holding hands and coming together in prayer, but in fact, he works miraculously. When you honor him and you care about others, he just does stuff that you don't even know is going on in the hearts of other people.

ECS: That’s one of the things I wanted to hear about too, how your faith informs your art, this vision of your collective, and your practices. Maybe this is a good time to talk about that.

SWR: I think my faith informs everything. I feel like I have experienced trauma in this life, and the Lord has so faithfully gotten me through it in the past that I know that he’s going to walk alongside us and go before us and make this possible. I think that my faith has driven us as a community and helped establish a culture of love and acceptance. 

We have this saying whenever we’re faced with a difficult decision in the village, we all understand it’s “people before pots.”

You don’t have to be a Christian to be part of who we are. We honor everybody’s journey that they’re on to find truth in who they are. I think that something about the inclusivity of how we do that and how we don’t apologize, no one apologizes for where their faith is grounded and there’s just freedom to be. So my faith drives everything. As a matter of fact, I don’t even think the Village is mine, I believe it’s God’s. Even the people that are on my team, that are not of the same kind of foundational faith that I am, agree with that. I don’t have anybody that speaks against that. They may not fully understand where I’m coming from, but I don’t fully understand where anybody’s coming from. But for me personally, my relationship with the Lord, pulling on the Holy Spirit to help me communicate, you know, using grace. We have this saying whenever we’re faced with a difficult decision in the village, we all understand it’s “people before pots.” So, what is right for this person? What is right for this group of people? That is so much more important than the pots. The pots are like a vehicle for us to grow together.

And then we have this advanced studies program, with 14 potters in there for one to three years. And they do that for each other. “Look what you did! What if—” “What if” is such a big word in our community. “What if you tried this? Oh, my gosh, I love that!” So there’s this always encouraging the creative inside each other.

ECS: What are some of the things that you’ve seen in your own art or in the art of those you’re teaching that when you raise that question, “What if” kind of blew you away that you were like, “Oh, this is cool”?

SWR: I think it first happened when Amy Jo Gelber was here as an apprentice and I was playing “What if?” with her, that I’d go, “Well, why don’t I do that. What if we try it together and we just both take that technique and come back together and see what we did with it?” It is mind-boggling. 

And so the “what if?” is something every single one of the mentors in our community talks about all the time, and it influences our work. I think imitation is a great teacher, so when I teach, I say, “If you want to try to make this pot, please make it. I know that ultimately you will make it your own, but it’s a great teacher. But what if you did something a little bit different to it that made it your own?” We do it all the time. We love it.

ECS: What are some of the things that you are most excited about?

SWR: Well, that’s probably a twofold answer. In 2017, we built an alternative kiln that we fire with gas and we put no glazes on the pots, and we throw in wood ash and soda ash, and blow it in, and we get these completely exquisite, unpredictable surfaces. There is no control at all. You just take the pot that you made and you surrender it to that kiln, and what will happen in there is what will happen. And that has opened up all of us, opened our hearts and minds up to get looser and have less control over what’s created.

ECS: Wow, it’s almost like you’re collaborating with something that’s not you, to create the pot.

SWR: That’s exactly right. We surrender to the fire and let the fire in the atmosphere do it. That is something that is so exciting. And that kiln survived the flood. It was built on a trailer with wheels so that we could take it, and we have! We took it over to a county here and fired the kiln, and all the pots were sold at a festival that raised funds for their community kitchen. So it travels! That was the one thing that my husband could just hook to the truck and drive it away, and you know off it went. It’s in my cohort, Karen Dubois’s garage, just safely waiting there for us. We’re pretty excited about that because that kiln’s a community maker. We all put the pots in together, we all fire it together. So we’ll probably be firing that kiln before we even have a facility just to gather and enjoy that so much. 

But the second part of your question, in terms of how we might be different, I can’t help but think we will totally be different. We won’t lose who we are at the core, but I don’t think you can go through something like this and not be changed. So I think we’re going to operate at a greater sense of gratefulness, a greater peace. You know, when you lose everything and come back from that, I think that brings a peace as opposed to a worry. With God’s help anything’s possible, look what happened. 

There is no control at all. You just take the pot that you made and you surrender it to that kiln, and what will happen in there is what will happen.

When you’re an artist, the space that you work in kind of determines how it’s going to be. We don’t know what that space is yet. In my perfect world, Emily, and I have not given up on this dream, we would instead find 14,000 square feet for me and our business, we would find 20-30,000 square feet and bring other medium art educators with us, and we have a collective. So we have gathered together a group of really excellent artists, really excellent in painting and jewelry and ceramics, and thought, what if we find an even bigger building because we were in the building together? We can go together and create an arts center and a destination for arts education. So I think if this goes according to plan, we will find a temporary place so that we can continue with our classes, but look for a bigger place that would actually be a new art center.

ECS: What a beautiful vision, and it’s interesting that you separated those things, but to me, it’s almost like the one could be a metaphor for the other, where you have this kiln that you created, but then you’re leaving it in the hands of the fire. So you’re saying we have this vision that we’re putting out into this chaos of unknown things, and we’re going to see what happens now.

SWR: You’ve exactly summed it up. It says somewhere in the scripture that it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to seek it out. I’ve always interpreted that when you’re waiting on the Lord and he’s going to do something, and you just feel strong in your spirit that he will, that process of searching it out is a changing process. So I feel like as we’re searching out this new facility, the new model that this business will be constructed under, we are being changed and shaped for it by him.

ECS: Could you give us a sense of the River Arts District and what it was before the flood and what others are thinking even as the recovery efforts are taking place?

SWR: In the way that I said we’re unique, the River Arts District is even more unique. What happened there was organic. When all the industry left the country and went to other countries, the whole River Arts District was abandoned manufacturing buildings. My sister was one of the first artists to go into one of those buildings. Basically, they just got a little corner of a big, huge warehouse and created a little place to do their work because it was really cheap, right? And so there’s probably 14 buildings that are filled with artists that all have come at different times. 

When you lose everything and come back from that, I think that brings a peace as opposed to a worry.

Over the years, the artists came together and created an association called the River Arts District Artists and started to collaborate and make things happen together. Until then, there was a $250 million project to put beautiful walkways and causeways through the River Arts District. We were worried about being gentrified out. But [after Hurricane Helene] everybody has been devastated. The buildings right along the river are either gone or completely gutted. It’s all gone. The people that were on higher ground were devastated too because the River Arts District now is sort of more of a “let’s go see the disaster!” than “let’s go see the art.” 

It used to be that hundreds of people were in the River Arts District every single day. I believe we bring in something like $1.3 billion worth of revenue a year into Asheville. So that has dried up for the city. It’s a complete disaster down there. It doesn’t even look remotely okay yet. It’s just buildings and semis wrapped around poles and big piles of stuff everywhere. Everybody has suffered, and nobody knows how it’s going to come back. 

But I know that we have to find a short-term facility so that we can start making pots and start teaching again and then look for a greater facility to do it in.

ECS: You said that you train artists in your program on some of this business side of stuff. How do people take that?

SWR: Each one’s unique. Some do come in and plan to go alone, and they’re going to build a studio at home, make work, sell on Instagram, and get a couple of galleries. And they have that kind of business model in mind. Then there are other people that are like, the last thing I want is to be alone, so they try to find ways to share. 

When we mentor people in business, the first question is always, “How do you envision your lifestyle as an artist?” If you’re working with a type A—I want to do tons of shows and I want to sell everything I make and I’m looking for a changing body of work and do new creative things—that’s one type of person.

Then there's another type of person that says, “Well, I don’t really have much aspirations to be a business person. I just want to make great pots.” And to them I say, “Well, you have to be a business person a little bit, because they have to go away; you can’t just keep making them. You will quit when your house is full of boxes full of pots. And so they go, “Oh, I guess I do.” It’s less of let’s put together a business plan, but more of how do you think we could help you make these pots go away? 

People say, “I’m self-employed and I do what I want,” but the truth is we’re not self-employed. We work for tons of people because we make the work that they’re going to buy. So we’re working for them. If you keep that in your mind when you’re making something, that you’re making it for somebody, it’s the only concept that you really need in business, because then you’re just discovering who that somebody is that’s going to have this piece.

ECS: Did it feel like a gift when you got into pottery? Because you seemed to treat it like a gift to give to others. Did it feel like that to you?

A whole lot of joy has come in my life because I was able to for many, many years be a maker. And I love projects even like this rebuild. There’s a disaster, there’s work, and then there’s going to be a completion, and that’s like making a pot.

SWR: It did. So I was creative as a child and I did ballet, I played the guitar, I played the piano, I did stained glass, I crocheted like a crazy person. Then I went off to college the first time and I thought I’d go to law school and become a lawyer. And just shortly into that pursuit, I thought, oh, I don't think I want to do that. So I left college after two years and hit the road with my now husband and I discovered that clay program while I was kind of young and just philandering around. This is not my personality but it happened to me, and when I went into that studio and looked around, I knew deep in my spirit that this was what I was going to do, and I hadn't even touched the clay yet! And then I did it, and that’s all I’ve done. I went to school for two years and it has been a full-time job ever since. 

A whole lot of joy has come in my life because I was able to for many, many years be a maker. And I love projects even like this rebuild. There’s a disaster, there’s work, and then there’s going to be a completion, and that’s like making a pot. You have this messy ball of clay, you shape it into something, you go through all the stages and processes of it, we surrender it to our kiln, and then there’s completion. My personality is project-oriented. So I've really been in the element that I believe I was designed for.

ECS: How does hope work for you? And how is it related to this broader work you're doing, your creative work, and your collaborative work?

SWR: Hope drives everything I do. Because if you think about it, almost everything that I’ve endeavored to do is pretty close to impossible. So hope that it will work out, hope that there’s provision, hope that springs eternal, that this is going to be okay. Hope that our potters will study with us. I’ll tell you the truth, Emily, I was terrified when we first started the advanced studies program. People moved their families from California and Wyoming to come and spend some time studying with us, and I was terrified. But we had a hope, and we yoked together on it, a hope that we could do this. 

We’re all professionals and we have a lot to share from our experiences, so hope has driven everything. I think when you make a little mug and pull the handle on it and put it on there, you are just hoping somebody’s going to agree with you and want it. It’s all built upon a hope that if you roll up your sleeves and believe in something and work hard for it, that it's going to work out.

ECS: This is just wonderful, and I hope that we’re able to see some of what’s going to happen and progress over time. I really hope this is going to yield even more support for you and for the others in the collective of the Village. It’s such a beautiful story you’ve shared with us, so thank you.