Community Potters

It’s that time of year again! We are so excited to once again host local potters at the library. There is an amazing assortment of different hand-crafted items to come look at and purchase. The show will be on until the end of the month, and we hope you take the time to come see!

See below for the list of potters that will be showing their work, as well as their bios:

Lila Balch

Ater a counseling career, Lila Balch is living her dream to become a potter. Brooklin has provided Pottery Making Studios and excellent potters who have set the way for her to make objects of beauty that are inspired by the sea and her native memories of objects with rounded bottoms.  Lila’s pots are made from porcelain and stoneware clays, fired in three different methods: an electric kiln, a raku kiln and a wood-fired kiln.  Her husband built the wood-fired kiln from a metal can buried in the ground.  Positive responses of her art, encourage Lila to keep learning as pottery making has proved to be as challenging as her former career.

Lynn Curran Sargent

Pottery is a creative process which involves so much that I enjoy: the throwing and building, the firing, the failures, the successes, and the continual problem solving. I’m so happy to be a part of it. My work is largely functional and I hope it expresses my love of clay, color, and carving. It’s been 50 years since I first learned enough about pottery to recognize I loved it, and it has been a passion ever since.

In the 1970’s, I was a young woman from Maine living in the East Village of New York City, looking for a place to call home. Fortunately, I met Jaqueline Weaver, the potter and owner of a small studio called Random Pottery, who took me under her wing and taught me a great deal about ceramics.

After she retired I took over Random Pottery and moved to several locations along my way to Brooklin.  Now this is home!

Martha Martin

Martha Martin, of Sedgwick, makes wheel thrown and hand built pottery combining beauty with functionality. A relative newcomer to ceramics, she’s been working with clay since retiring from teaching in 2019. She is a member of the Brooklin Pottery Co-op.

Caroline Mayher

Sixty years ago I signed up to take pottery lessons on Thursday evenings from Henry Okamoto at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York. I fell in love with clay and I never looked back.

The Clay Art Center at the time (it still exists) was deeply influenced by Henry and his knowledge of Japanese pottery, and the Zen aesthetic.

Years later I studied with another Japanese potter in Boston – Makoto Yabe. I taught pottery at Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y. for 22 years, and at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Mass. During summer vacations I worked at my studio here in Brooklin, Maine, occasionally teaching adults, and children from the Brooklin School. Currently I am showing my work at the Artemis Gallery in Northwest Harbor.

Nancy Morris

My love of making pots began with a 50th birthday gift of 3 free lessons. Working with my hands, centering clay and creating flowing forms that vitrify into functional ware through heat has become a passion.  Early on I had the good fortune to work with Susan Beecher.  Inspired by Susan I strive to create ceramics that not only look good but feel good; beautiful pieces we eat and drink from, pour and hold that elevate our daily rituals.

David Porter

When Jean, my late wife, and I lived in Athens, Georgia, we became fascinated with the Georgia piedmont potters and admired the range of functional, mostly stoneware pottery. In the 1970’s and 80’s we became somewhat avid collectors of the works of Michael Simon, Ron Meyers, David Morgan, Michael Pitts and many others. This interest in pottery led me to take beginning classes on the wheel with Rob Sutherland and others in the 90’s. gaining a much deeper appreciation and enjoyment of our collected pots after handling clay and glazes firsthand.

After moving to Brooklin in 2006, I took a class at Haystack with Linda Christianson, who memorably complemented my efforts by saying, “David, what nice pots. They have a lot of gravity.” They still do! Joining the Brooklin Pottery Coop brought me in touch with Bunny Gorski and Caroline Mayher. Both talented potters who gave me encouragement. My current interest is creating pots using textured clay with roughened surfaces and unfiltered slip collected from the ocean shoreline.

Cathy Rees

Cathy has always has her hands in the mud. Whether in the garden or in the clay studio. She has studied ecology and has worked in parks, forests and in the landscaping business for most of her adult life. Her interest in pottery developed along with her interest in the tangled web of life, particularly the botanical world.

Without formal education in clay, she has attended numerous workshops and short courses in various aspects of pottery making wherever her travels have taken her. She is currently a member of the Brooklin Pottery Coop, a communal clay studio, where she creates wheel thrown forms that are often altered, pierced and excised to reveal imagined layers that lie beneath the surface. She draws inspiration from the native flora that inhabits the coast of Maine and finds connections and patterns in its beauty.

She received a BS from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay majoring in environmental planning and earned a MS from Bard College where she studied ecology.