Before she made clay pieces for a living, Christine Clark was a teacher of Physical Education, eventually becoming the first women's' athletic director at MIT in 1970, where she coached, and taught and also started taking formal pottery classes. Since then she has taught, run, and/or worked at studios and coops in Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and her current home state of North Carolina. Christine brings a joy and inspiration to whatever she focuses on, from functional pottery, to sculptural work, to digging in her garden, or singing and dancing in the kitchen.  Her love and connection with the plants and animals comes out in her pieces, depicting symbolically what she hears through Nature.  Christine is a founding member of Earthaven Ecovillage, and a member of the American Crafts Council and the Southern Highland Handcraft Guild. Four of her sculptural Pieces are currently in a show called Thresholds Art and Spiritual Life that opened in Charleston, South Carolina in 2003 and is traveling around the Southeast for three years.

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Doug Dacey creates beautifully functional porcelain pottery in his North Carolina Mountain Studio. Doug glazes his pottery in brilliant blues and deep greens, with lovely detail. All pieces are lead free and oven proof.

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Connie Deklewa holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics and has been a full-time studio potter for over 20 years. Her pieces are individually handcrafted, utilizing the techniques of both wheel throwing and handbuilding to achieve the final forms and surface textures of the pieces. Symmetrical forms are enhanced through alterations, distortions as well as additions to the shapes.

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Award-winning artist Yvonne Hegney has studied ceramics since her days at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, where she earned a BA in Fine Arts.  She has studied under Hiroshi Sueyushi and Traudi Thornton, the Svenska Konst Verkstaden in Stockholm, Sweden and the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina. Yvonne has maintained a full-time artist's studio since 1988, first in Leland, North Carolina before relocating to Bakersville, North Carolina in 1998.  Her art is represented in galleries and is placed in corporate and private collections throughout the world.

"I feel great affinity with nature and organic construction and texture, while my interest in ancient cultures adds dimension to my work with a sense of encrusted agelessness.  I find that clay is the perfect medium to once a tactile message of sumptuous three-dimensionality, and through the process of pit firing I add color and depth to each piece. I then marry the finished form of clay with found objects of metal, to incorporate all in a synergistic evocation of timeless transcendence."

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Lynn Jenkins took her first pottery course while in high school and knew it would become a way of life for her.  After graduating from convey Community College's Production Crafts Program, Lynn built her home/studio in Blowing Rock and traveled the country doing craft shows for almost 5 years. Most of her work during this period was functional cone 10 pottery.  After tiring of life on the road, Lynn began working with galleries so she could have more time to devote to what she loves: making pots and playing with the fire. This sparked her love and interest in the art of Raku Pottery, and she has specialized in this for the past 15 years. For Lynn, life is a journey full of pots waiting to be born. She loves bringing them into the world and finding good homes for them all.

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John Ransmeier was first introduced to clay in 1968, and he built his first kick wheel in 1970.  He has been working with pattern for some time now. Earlier patterns involved carving clay in its leatherhard state, but recently he has been press-molding concavities and convexities and assembling them on large plaster forms. His work is featured in galleries nationwide and internationally, and is in the private collection of Oprah Winfrey.

"I enjoy the simplicity of these new patterns and especially like what they do with light. My most recent idea is to make pieces for a particular glaze. As these exist only in my imaginings, it is hard to say much about them. There is a saying, 'at the point of origin, the most possibilities exist'. I find it both challenging and satisfying to explore new directions. As clay lends itself to a myriad of forms and concepts, I feel it is my job to develop ideas as they present themselves to me."

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