Pottery

Exhibit featuring the works of potter Winnie Coggins and pastel artist Barbara Steinacker will be on display through Dec. 4 at Artists Gallery, 10227 Wincopin Circle. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturdays. Call 410-740-8249 for more information.

Towson University's Department of Art will hold its 41st annual Holiday Pottery Sale Friday-Saturday, Dec. 2-3, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., in the Center for the Arts Ceramics Studio Room 3012. As in years past, this event will showcase a large selection of handcrafted, functional ceramics, all of which are created by students and faculty. Admission is free. Call 410-704-2787. Monumental Occasion The annual Washington Monument lighting, known as A Monumental Occasion , will happen this year Thursday, Dec. 1, 5:30-8 p.m., in Mount Vernon Place (on the 600 block of North Charles Street)

The paint-your-own pottery sessions at The Pottery Stop in Fulton are going strong, according to Carla Ferguson, who, along with Maegan Supple, shares the management of the shop in Fulton and its flagship site in Ellicott City. While the Fulton location doesn't have a café like its sister store on Route 40, it does have a quirky charm and a bucolic view of the cows at Maple Lawn Farms. More importantly, it also offers workshops on painting techniques and silver clay jewelry-making for both kids and adults.

The paint-your-own pottery sessions at The Pottery Stop in Fulton are going strong, according to Carla Ferguson, who, along with Maegan Supple, shares the management of the shop in Fulton and its flagship site in Ellicott City. While the Fulton location doesn't have a café like its sister store on Route 40, it does have a quirky charm and a bucolic view of the cows at Maple Lawn Farms. More importantly, it also offers workshops on painting techniques and silver clay jewelry-making for both kids and adults.

MANY PEOPLE dream by the beach during the summer, but few run with those musings months later. That's what Westminster resident Melissa Shaffer did when she opened the Pottery Loft on Main Street. On Nov. 15, with hot cider and shortbread, and soothing music playing, Shaffer opened what she and others describe as a "stress-free place to have fun and explore your creativity." The Pottery Loft provides more than 100 pieces of unfinished pottery for customers to paint, sponge or stencil at their whim.

If you're curious about pottery and ceramic sculpture, Baltimore Clayworks invites you to try the craft this Saturday in the sixth annual Clayfest, held on the grounds of Baltimore Clayworks in Mount Washington.Potters will offer free instruction on hand-building, using a potter's wheel and on decorating prepared clay forms. They will also show beginners how to fire pots or sculptures in the Raku style.The festival will be from 1 to 4 p.m. outside the Clayworks building, 5706 Smith Ave. Home-baked goods and lemonade will be available.

GIVE YOUR creative energy an outlet this winter with one of 14 arts classes at the Hanover Area Arts Guild Gallery, 32 Carlisle St., Hanover, Pa. Children and adults can learn and enjoy art taught by local artists in media ranging from watercolor to pottery.You can meet the instructing artists on Winter Demonstration Day, Jan. 13, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the gallery. It's an opportunity to view their work and discuss the planned courses.Expenses range from $40 to $105 for courses that run approximately five weeks.

Workers who hit a pile of bricks while building a sidewalk in Catonsville at first thought they had struck the foundation of an old house.But when they returned to the site after recent rain, they saw a strange masonry arch about 2 feet high protruding from the mud.That was the start of a three-week mystery that ended yesterday as state archaeologists determined the bricks were the remains of a kiln that belonged to a pottery local historians say operated in...

Bug-lovers are attracted to Elkridge potters Van and Gail Wensil. Larger-than-life honeybees, houseflies and cockroaches regularly appear on the sisters' pottery."

With a passion for art since she was a young child, Rebecca Moy was electrified the first time she observed clay thrown on a potter's wheel. "It was the most incredible thing," she recalls. "The clay came alive."Partner David Young's first encounter with clay was more an act of final desperation than ethereal calling. A self-described miserable student who was anxious to foster a skill while at Glenelg High School, Young followed a teacher's suggestion and gave pottery a whirl. Within three weeks, Young had learned all his teachers could teach.

The Columbia Association Art Center invites artists to participate in "Singular Sensations," a holiday exhibition featuring artwork in all media priced for sale at $150 or less. Show runs Dec. 3-13 at 6100 Foreland Garth. Exhibition will feature pottery, fiber, jewelry, paintings, photographs, collage, glass and more. Reception will be held Dec. 3. Artists receive 80 percent commission on all sales. Deadline for entry form and artwork is today. Call 410-730-0075 or go to columbiaartcenter.

Exhibit featuring the works of potter Winnie Coggins and pastel artist Barbara Steinacker will be on display through Dec. 4 at Artists Gallery, 10227 Wincopin Circle. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturdays. Call 410-740-8249 for more information.

Manuelita White spent years making pottery. But over time, the work became too tedious for the 50-year-old Bel Air resident. "I had to clean the pottery and then fire it," White said. "Then I had to paint it and fire it. Then I glazed it and fired it again. Making pottery took forever, and it was too much work." After a lengthy pottery-making hiatus, White was told by a co-worker about a place where she could made pottery minus all the work. Although she was skeptical, White tried it with her 9-year-old granddaughter, Emma Cummings of Hickory.

Potter Willie Leftwich worked as an engineer and lawyer before taking up ceramics after his retirement at age 60. More than 50 of his three-color, wood-fired clay vessels, glazed in warm earth tones with accents of blue and green, are on view in the James E. Lewis Museum at Morgan State University. Leftwich sees his work as an expression of intuitively grasped "essential realities" that lie beyond the power of words to express. His pots, vases, bowls and other vessels are inspired by the shapes and proportions of the human body, and their tactile qualities are as much a part of their meaning as are their formal properties: These are works that beg to be touched.

Alyssa Steinhorn, 10, a fifth-grader at Dayton Oaks Elementary School, sat quietly painting a ceramic piggy bank that will be bright pink when it is finished. Across the table, her sister Amy, 5, painted a ceramic star box and her sister Julie, 7, painted a fairy sitting on the moon. Even their mother, Joyce, joined in the fun and painted a ceramic bumblebee. At a table nearby, Erin Hodge, 16, a junior at Long Reach High School, serenely painted stripes onto a ceramic bowl. Although the colors looked muted at this stage, they will turn out to be bright orange, bright green and bright blue, she said.

His eyes, under prominent brows, span the width of his scarred face. His nose is long and thin, but with two bulbous nostrils. His mouth contains only three teeth, each jutting out at a strange angle. He is an ugly jug, one of the artistic creations for the Ugly Jugs and Raku Pottery class at Common Ground on the Hill at McDaniel College. The two-week classes give students a chance to mold clay into strange shapes and functional objects while learning about the civilizations in which their art originated.

Lucille Mathews Mercer, a Baltimore native who won national acclaim for her pottery and helped found the local Potters Guild, died of heart failure Monday in her home at Edenwald Retirement Community in Towson. She was 98. Mrs. Mercer had loved music and the arts since childhood, and pottery was in the family: Her grandfather made terra cotta pipes in Hagerstown after emigrating from Germany. But she did not take up pottery until after her children were grown. "My father had always had woodworking as a hobby, and he said to her, `Now that the children are grown, you must have a hobby,'" said Mrs. Mercer's daughter Mary Lu Fisher of Baltimore and Sun City Center, Fla. "He'd read in the paper that they had a night class [in pottery]