Arts This Week: Maker’s Market at Morehouse Studio
By Sage Tanguay
Date: 05/31/2025
Sage Tanguay 00:07
Morehouse Studio is hosting a Maker’s Market on Saturday, May 31st from 11am to 3pm. For Arts This Week, we spoke to the pottery studio owners.
Tiffany Johnson 00:19
I’m Tiffany Johnson.
Kate English 00:20
My name is Kate English.
Tiffany Johnson 00:22
We do classes and we do workshops, and we also do membership there.
Kate English 00:28
All our workshops are beginner-friendly, and then our classes are mostly beginner. And then we also have…if it’s otherwise, it’ll be listed. The ethos that we inherited with the studio is that we’re creating community through ceramics. So we really like to focus on the community aspect first.
Tiffany Johnson 00:46
With our memberships, we like to do community things like our potlucks, so that we can all hang out and then show off our pottery. Because, like, a lot of potters are introverted, and it’s hard for them to like get out sometimes. So it feels like a nice get together with all your friends and sharing all of your creations that you made. And it’s also really nice because we also share, like, all of our tools and everything.
Sage Tanguay 01:11
Why did you want to host this market?
Kate English 01:13
We had a potter’s market in December, which was just ceramicists, and it went so well, and it was so fun and so exciting. So we wanted to bring in more kinds of makers from around Virginia, and it’ll just be like a super fun kind of community event, a good place to meet artists and a good place to get a Father’s Day gift if you need a Father’s Day gift. And we have such cool artists coming, we have some of our own members, which we always like to really encourage our members to sell, if they can, if they feel comfortable, and maybe push that comfort zone a little bit, because people always undervalue their own work. And then we have some people from out of the studio. We have other people. We have somebody selling books. We have somebody selling, oh, these really cool printed bags, somebody with jewelry.
Tiffany Johnson 02:01
I think someone crocheting.
Kate English 02:03
Yeah, crocheting. Also at the market, we’re going to be having a charity raffle for a couple of local organizations. We’re going to raffle off some merch, a couple of ceramic pieces by one of our amazing members, and some workshop spots. If you’re interested in that, come on out to the market on May 31st.
Tiffany Johnson 02:22
Another thing to look forward to.
Sage Tanguay 02:23
Do you have any advice for listeners who may be interested in pottery but are intimidated?
Tiffany Johnson 02:28
If you want to do or try something and something’s holding you back? I always say: Just do it. Just get into it. Because nine times out of 10, like you rarely regret it, and if like, you realize you’re not into it. Now you know, at least that’s not your thing.
Kate English 02:45
I think the other thing that I end up talking about a lot when I’m teaching classes is how much our internal monologue like holds us back from stuff I find, especially women, and especially like middle aged women, we’re so hesitant to let ourselves be bad at things. And pottery is so humbling, and it’s so like, especially the wheel, you’re so bad at it for so long. It’s like, you just have to get really comfortable being bad at something. And it’s kind of freeing being like, Oh, I am bad at this. I’m expected to be bad at this, like I’m doing a good job at learning, but I don’t have to be doing this perfectly to have a good time.
Tiffany Johnson 03:27
I always tell my students, don’t worry about what you’re making. Just worry about if you’re enjoying yourself, and if you know you continuously do it, that you’re making progress, that’s all that matters.
Sage Tanguay 03:39
The Maker’s Market will be at 1575 Avon Street Ext. from 11am to 3pm on Saturday, May 31st. More information can be found at morehouse.studio.
Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu.
