Featured Potter was destined to work with clay ☺

Distributed to publications throughout the southeast, Fall 2010

by Hugh Martin

SEAGROVE, NC – Ann Williams picked up her first ball of clay in 1973 and sculpted it into the shape of a cat. From that moment she knew that her destiny was cast in clay.

Williams is the featured potter of the Twenty-ninth Annual Seagrove Pottery Festival, which will be held November 20 and 21 on the grounds of Seagrove Elementary School in Seagrove, North Carolina.

Williams has been a regular vendor at the show since 1988, the same year she opened her own shop, Fork Creek Mill Pottery, in Seagrove.

Her work is well-known throughout the industry. You will find her pieces in the homes of rock stars, NASCAR families and every day folks. Her handmade Christmas tree ornaments have adorned the tree at The White House on two separate occasions. The Winston-Salem Arts Guild asked for ornaments to be featured on the award-winning North Carolina-grown trees that were to be in the home of the U.S. President.

Her work has been compared the art of naturalist Laurel Burch and her tulip pieces have been described as “like a Tiffany window.” She has been featured in magazines that include American Profiles and Cat Fancy. She has made a name for herself through the production of her line of cat-themed pottery.

She has received numerous awards for her work placing first, second or third on several occasions during the Fine Arts Festival of the Arts Council of Moore County, North Carolina. She has placed at several shows in Macon, Georgia, and in 2002 was the featured potter at the Appalachian Potters’ Market in Marion, North Carolina.

In addition to her craft, Ann has a community spirit, lending her expertise to various local organizations through her volunteer work. She is currently helping on a project of the NC Museum of Traditional Pottery, which is putting together a cook book that will feature functional pottery pieces along with recipes by potters and friends.

“Go to any church dinner and you will see pieces of Seagrove pottery up and down the table,” Williams said. “The fun for me is to go through and see whose pots are being used.”

Williams is quick to point out the connection between food and pottery. “Using pottery for food is the best thing in the world,” she says. “You can cook in pottery, keep the food hot, and then you can put cold food in pottery, not to mention that pottery is the most attractive vessel for serving.”

“I like to eat and I like to cook,” she said. “I really enjoy baking and I like eating out of pottery.”

The cook book should be ready by festival time and will be available through the museum, which is located in the former Seagrove Grocery building, directly across from the Seagrove Town Hall.

Williams, an Indiana native, attended a high school that was ironically named “Clay” High School. “When I was in high school my mother didn’t want me to have a study hall,” Williams remembers. “She always encouraged me to seek out creative venues.”

Williams said that she took a class at South Bend (Indiana) Art Center where she had the opportunity to get her first taste of pottery work. “That was all she wrote,” she says. “I was hooked.” She still has pieces that she made in that first class.

Her new-found passion led her to Indiana University, where she earned a degree in Studio Art with a minor in Art History. She also gained experience from pottery workshops at Notre Dame University. Looking back in some of her notes from college Williams now finds references to Seagrove and Jugtown. It would be several years after graduating, however, before she discovered her calling to the area.

After graduation Williams said that she packed everything she owned into a Honda Civic and headed south. She landed in Macon, Georgia, where she started her career as a production worker at a pottery called “The Clay Pigeon.”

“I turned thirty thousand pots for five cents a pound. Now production workers can make as much as two dollars a pound,” she said. Williams said that the pots were purchased by a middleman from New York. It wasn’t unusual to see her work in upscale department stores selling for much higher prices.

Williams said that one day she was in the checkout line at a Piggly Wiggly store in Macon when she spied something familiar on the cover of a Woman’s Day magazine. “I picked up the magazine and saw a photo of pieces that I had made,” she said. “It was the first time that I had gotten national recognition, even though nobody knew that I had made them.”

Williams had spent several years working at the Clay Pigeon when things started going downhill for the business. “I realized when the owner had to sell his motorcycle to pay the bills that it was time to move on.”

In October of 1983 she traveled to Seagrove to meet Phil Morgan, who had already made a name for himself. After that first meeting Morgan offered her a job. “We didn’t have a contract or anything like that,” Williams said. “I promised him that I would never leave him in a lurch, and I went to work.”

At that time there were eighteen potteries in the Seagrove area.

Morgan encouraged Williams to do some of her own work and allowed her to do so while working with him. “I started buying some of my own equipment and eventually was able to produce my own work,” she said.

After working for Morgan for several years, Williams set out on her own, opening her business in an old grist mill near Seagrove. Fork Creek Mill Pottery opened its doors in 1988 and was the twenty-third pottery in the Seagrove community.

Before her exposure to pottery Ann wanted to be a veterinarian. Even though that choice didn’t pan out, she still shows her love of animals through many of the stoneware pieces that she produces. She is probably best known for her line of work featuring cat art.

“I like producing the cat art,” she said. “My very first toys were cats. The bone structure is pretty much the same for all cats while there are many different ways to draw dog breeds.” She does, however, produce dog pieces for special orders.

Ann has three cats that she rescued through her volunteer work with the Randolph County Humane Society. “I fostered cats for several years,” she said. Many of those cats inspired designs, and she has a loyal following of cat-loving customers who can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

Williams ran her business from the old mill for over five years while also participating in numerous shows up and down the east coast. She produced a wide range of works using traditional methods and raku, which is a much quicker method of firing the pieces than wood or gas.

In the mid-1990s, the impending opening of the interstate highway that would bypass Seagrove, along with the expense of paying rent on the old mill helped her to decide to buy a house on Plank Road, just a stone’s throw from Seagrove Elementary School, and move her business there. The proximity to the location of the annual Seagrove Pottery Festival helped her visibility tremendously.

The new location, which became known as the “Little Pink Pottery on Plank Road,” was her home base for several years until she started to feel that she was losing her inspiration. She contemplated retiring. “I thought that I could just take down the sign and continue to make pots,” she said. Ann made another move, this time to the community of Ether, just a few miles down the road from Seagrove, in Montgomery County.

The move gave her the opportunity to try some new things. She is currently producing only stoneware, but hopes to return to other methods, including raku. She still does wood-fired salt-glazed work. Her work is primarily sold through Seagrove Pottery galleries in Raleigh, Tarboro and Seagrove, and her website, www.forkcreekmillpottery.com.

Ann is now producing pieces using new colors and is incorporating new methods of applications, including airbrush techniques. The result is a dazzling array of pieces that are quite eye-catching.

A popular addition to her line has been her production of face jugs with cat faces rather than the traditional “ugly” face.

Ann’s works are not limited to cats. Since 1987 she has held a copyright on a popular line of snowmen that she produces and is always trying new ideas and methods. Some recent projects include lighthouses and multimedia pieces that incorporate materials other than clay into the design.

“My parents were my greatest influence.” she shares. “Phil Morgan has also offered me much encouragement, and continues to do so.” She says that she has also been inspired by the artwork of Henri Matisse and Van Gogh.

She likes to relate the history of pottery. “At one time, before the American Revolution, it was illegal to make pottery” she relates. “All pottery had to be made in England and shipped to the colonies.” She tells that, up until the development of metal and glassware, pottery was the primary vessels for food use. “The focus for pottery producers then moved to making whisky jugs and crocks,” she said.

Education is an important element of Williams’ interests. She loves to share her craft with school children, especially Raku. “You can see the flames while firing raku pieces, and I can show children that the temperature is much hotter than their family oven in the kitchen at home.”

She appeared regularly at Dr. John Langley’s classes at Rockingham Junior High School in Rockingham, NC. “Dr. Langley was strongly in favor of exposing children to the arts.” Williams said. “He would hold a music festival every year to raise money for the arts programs. There would be well-known musicians performing and the crowds would be huge!”

Williams would like to see the arts receive more attention in the schools. “Art is not a priority.” She says. “Sports get the major funding. In the growing process the child comes to a point when they say they can’t do something instead of “I can do anything.” Someone has told them that they can’t do something.”

She says that there are grants available for the arts, but that it would be necessary for someone to have the skills to seek them out and then write the proposals to compete for them. She has several programs that she is eager to share with schools if the opportunity presents itself.

Langley’s program in Rockingham garnered the attention of Charles Kurault, the late host of CBS Television’s “Sunday Morning” show. When the show aired Ann wasn’t left out - at least not completely. “My hands made national television,” she laughs. “My hands were shown guiding the hands of a child while turning a pot.”

Williams is also one of “Roy’s Folks,” appearing in a television series of the same name in 2001. “Roy and David are a delight to work with,” she said. “They are just good people and they make you feel so at ease when you’re working with them.”

Television viewers in central North Carolina and Virginia are familiar with the popular series on FOX8 WGHP-TV featuring host Roy Ackman and producer David Weatherly, who travel the area, sharing human-interest stories of everyday people, many of whom are craftspeople. Subjects of these stories become known as “Roy’s Folks.”

Since appearing on the series, Williams has been a regular vendor at the Roy’s Folks Craft Fair, which is held annually during the Christmas season in High Point. It’s an added benefit to being one of “Roy’s Folks.”

In 2008 Williams was Guest Artist at the North Carolina Veterinary Technicians Conference. Her honors are numerous. She was featured in a show at the NC Pottery Center titled “Companionable Creatures: Animal Imagery in NC Clay,” and was a Featured Potter on NBC Channel 6 in Charlotte. Ann was the Featured Artist at the 2000 Gallery Hop in Macon, Georgia and from 1999 through 2006 she was the subject of a one-woman show at the North Carolina Welcome Center on Interstate 26 in Columbus, NC.

In 1999 Ann was featured as a “Working Woman” on a FOX 8 TV in High Point. Her work has been featured in “Self Portraits in Miniature” an alumni exhibit at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and her work received the “Best in Exhibit, Purchase Award” at a Day in the Park event in High Point, NC.

A little boy once approached her with a simple query: “Why cats?” “It was the best question I had received in twenty years.” Williams said. She said that the only answer she could give him was, “I don’t know - I love cats.”

Be sure to visit Ann’s Fork Creek Mill Pottery booth at the Twenty-Ninth Annual Seagrove Pottery Festival, where you’ll find cats and a whole lot more. The festival is November 20 and 21, 2010 on the grounds of Seagrove Elementary School in Seagrove, North Carolina.