WHAT SHE MAKES:
I really do things kind of across the board mostly because I feel like I'm just getting started. I've been at this for just a few years, so everything interests me. A lot of my interest right now that I'm spending a lot of time on is finger pinching, which is making pots strictly from - like the phrase says - finger pinching those pots, and it's a way to make large pots larger than I used to be able to throw on the wheel.
We have a palette of glazes down here at Lyndon Street, and we use those to fire in the gas kiln. There are four of us that share this space, so we all contribute to mixing those glazes. There are kind of neutral colors that come out pretty consistently, and we're experimenting with blues and reds. But my biggest interest is in making the forms. That's where my love is right now. I like putting on the glaze, but the form and the process of making those pieces is my big love right now.
HER INSPIRATION:
It can come from a lot of different places. I'll see pots that other potters have made, even ancient potters but certainly my contemporaries. There's something about it that just really attracts me. And the things that seem to attract me the most are pieces that are more organic-looking, that are not real neat-looking but have a looser form and a looser feel to them. I like leaving the finger marks on the pieces that I make, and there's just something about that that appeals to me so strongly, so that's the direction I usually go in. At the other end of the spectrum, I like making dishes.
WHY SHE BECAME A POTTER:
I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I'm a professional woman. I've had years doing a whole different thing with my life, and I felt like something was missing. I did a lot of art when I was growing up. In fact, that was a really big part of my life, and then I moved away from that somehow. So, I started looking for it, trying to find what was missing. I knew when I was around pottery in stores or had a chance to go to Seagrove I would lose track of time; I would be so engrossed. I tried a pottery class, and I was hooked from the first time my hands touched the clay.
HER FAVORITE PIECE:
I went to a class at Penland School of Crafts in 2004, and I made a piece there that was one of my first finger-pinch pieces, a very large piece, and we sawdust fired that piece. It sold, and I know where it is, and I love knowing where it is. I'm really very happy about it. I'll never forget it. It was a water jar, like a Southwestern kind of shape, round but with a very narrow neck.
WHY SHE LOVES LYNDON STREET ARTWORKS:
When I started here several years ago, I was really just getting started, and it's been kind of an incubator for me as a beginner. It's something I'm enormously grateful for. It's rare. I came to this endeavor late, and my choices were to kind of work on my own or take classes. But here I can be around other people who are creating. I've gotten ideas from being around other artists. It's really relaxed. I can kind of go at my own pace.
WHAT SHE'S WORKING ON:
Right now, I'm making some pieces that are also finger-pinched. I'm experimenting with making the pieces deeper, as opposed to more shallow pieces. I have some things that I'm wanting to do that are maybe twice as large and have more volume and a more organic shape, really without it looking like a bowl but looking more like a cabbage maybe.
- Alexa Milan
