Episode 7: Adrian Quintanar: Throwing Colorful, Functional Pottery

09/04/18 • 26 min

Crafting a single piece of pottery can take up to three weeks. There’s the design stage, then the piece is created on the pottery wheel and must dry completely before it goes into the kiln. “If that moisture, as it leaves the clay, if it is rushed, it will crack in the kiln,” Quintanar explained. “It has to be bone dry, that’s what we call it when all the moisture is out of the pot. That takes days.”

The firing takes a few days, and then the pot is glazed and fired again. The kilns at the arts center are massive and can fit a couple of thousand pieces. With about 200 students and teachers creating throughout the week, it still takes time to fill the kilns.

Now, Quintanar is working on his end-of-residency show and experimenting with colored clay and colorful slips. “I want the show to be really bright and colorful,” Quintanar shared. “I’ve been making my own clay and mixing up my own slips, which are colorful slips that are applied on the surface.”

Slips consist of clay with water added and can be painted on a piece of pottery. Quintanar has been focused on experimenting for four months and has found some trial and error in the process. “I’ve had a lot of failures recently, after the firings, losing the colors,” he explained. “I could show you tons of tests of little white cups that are supposed to be purple and pink and blue. ... I really finally think I’ve come upon a direction that might work. I haven’t so much thought about the forms yet. Like I said, I want it to be functional. So, of course, there will be bottles, jars and cups and possibly bowls. But there’s so many design elements to choose from, so I need to do a lot of brainstorming and drawing and sketching for those things, but I think it’s going to be really exciting. It’s going to be really colorful if it all goes well.”

Special Guest: Adrian Quintanar.

Special Guest: Adrian Quintanar.

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Episode 6: Logan Duvall: Taking Local to Market

Collier started reaching out to local businesses, starting with Geri’s Jams and Jellies. Today, the market carries produce and products from businesses such as Fennel and Fire, Teaberry Kombucha Co., and the Farm at Barefoot Bend. “It’s a lot of local people that are really, really good at what they do,” said Duvall. “We’re able to bring it all together. Our big draw is definitely produce. People come out for tomatoes more than anything else, but it’s a way to showcase some of these other people that don’t have storefronts.”

While the market no longer sells produce from the McGee garden, the family has found creative ways to create other Me and McGee products. “In produce, inevitably, there’s a ton of waste,” Duvall explained. “So, my mom and grandma decided that they wanted to try to do pickles and salsa just because we go through so many tomatoes. It just took off.”

The market is open all year, except for January, which distinguishes it from a farmer’s market. Vendors also aren’t required to be on the premises -- Me and McGee staff explains products and handles all transactions. As the market continues to grow, Duvall works to refine the focus of the market, which was a business tool he learned while working in real estate. “Really looking at what’s working and what’s not and making sure that we’re doubling down on what’s working,” Duvall explained. “The creativity and the hardwork and the sacrifice was my family. I didn’t do any of that. But just making sure we’re on the right path and we’re treating everything like a real business--that’s been the change in the past year.”

Special Guest: Logan Duvall.

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Episode 8: Tabatha Reeves: Storytelling with Candle Scents

And they keep their product lines interesting, even taking special orders. “We have these really unique niche scents in some of our candles, so they work really well for historical reenactors, but they’re not going to sell to somebody else,” Reeves said. “We have a state park that we contract to that deals with historical reenactors all the time, and one of their properties on the park is a jail. We designed an entire line of candles just for their jail, scents that would have been in a jailhouse in the mid-1800s to early 1900s when it was operational.”

One of those specialty scents is called The Sheriff. “It kind of smells like this dirty man that’s been smoking a pipe,” Reeves explained. “When I smell it, I get the thought of the cowboy with his feet up on the desk, and the big sheriff badge and a hat over his face, sleeping while his prisoners are in the cells behind him. That’s what it conjures for me. Many of our scents are like that. You can smell it and you can conjure this idea of what it is supposed to be in your head.”

But not everyone can smell the candles. “A lot of men can’t smell,” Reeves explained. “I didn’t realize this until I started dealing with men on a regular basis. Men, blue-collar workers, a lot of them can’t smell because they’ve worked around chemicals their whole life. Or they’ve worked around major smells their whole life. My dad is a maintenance man at a roofing plant. My dad can’t smell anything. Asphalt’s burned the inside of his nose. So he can’t smell candles. My dad can’t smell when something is cooking. And he’s not the only one.”

Special Guest: Tabatha Reeves.