Five weeks after Helene dumped an unprecedented amount of rain in our region, we were grateful for the reopened lane on HWY 26 crossing the Nolichucky river on our side of Sam’s gap. Why were we crossing the one lane bridge Friday night? My wife and I made our annual pilgrimage to the WNC pottery festival.
It’s on the first Saturday in November, and each year thousands of people gather to witness an art as old as civilization itself. Handcrafted clay and ceramic, pieces of pottery of every shape imaginable, ranging from $3.00 to $3000.00 are all on display and available to purchase.
If you can envision an outdoor art studio in one of the most scenic settings imaginable, then you get the picture. Situated in Sylva, artisans from near and far trickled in and set up Friday evening in a dull cool drizzle. The festival is held just across the train-tracks from the cinematic backdrop scene that locals will cheerfully tell you made it the movie “Deliverance” starring Burt Reynolds.
The autumn foliage is barely past its zenith for peak colors, but the setting is breathtaking. It’s the type of place you picture in your mind when listening to an old Tom T. Hall song, where shop owners still play Loretta Lynn on their CD players and can be seen shamelessly smoking, standing out on the sidewalk while they watch cars and people pass them by.
Under the shadow of the iconic Jackson County Courthouse, these days it’s their public library, stationed majestically on its hillside, you’ll experience the same idyllic Mayberry feel that draws tourists to many of the towns throughout rural North Carolina. Quaint is an understatement and Sylva feels like a town almost captured in a time capsule.
Saturday morning started off foggy but by noon it was as warm as a summer afternoon. If you look closely enough at the festival’s banner just outside Bridge Park, you can still see Dillsboro faintly in its background; these days Dillsboro is covered over by Sylva. Because of its popularity, I imagine this change of venue is disheartening for the folks in Dillsboro.
By chance, my wife and I have received what’s called a Golden ticket, this allows us with a few others to enter the festival 30 minutes before they open it to the public to get the first glimpses and opportunities to snatch up our choices of pottery. Reminiscent of the old saying like a bull in a China shop, the ticket booth has a polite sign saying no pets please, and for good reason, there is valuable handcrafted pottery stacked precariously on tables and shelving units throughout the festival.
The traffic through the ticket booth remained steady, all through the morning the festival swelled in attendance until the crowded booths overflowed with people. In the recent wake of hurricane Helene, the region's worst catastrophe in recent memory, instead of the vibe you’d expect like the desperation of a neighborhood rummage sale, there’s an air of optimism among the vendors.
There’s good reason to be hopeful and positive even in the midst of the unresolved chaos, it’s not just the huge crowds that continue to gather, it’s their bonds as potters that ties them together. Pockets of people and potters are constantly chattering about their flooded basement or a barn that washed away, and in somber tones they discuss the ongoing cleanup and loss. Clearly, there is nothing like a crisis to cement the bonds of a community.
The ratio of those gray haired to college recruits was hard to miss. The overwhelming majority of the people and the potters appear to have graduated from high school when Nixon was still in office. There were a few younger folks mingled in, but not many.
Much like baring your soul at an AA meeting, to set up a booth here requires a certain depth of vulnerability. It’s hard to know how much time they spend preparing for these shows and then the time to setup and breakdown afterwards. These vendors have to possess a special type of bravery and be able to handle the uncertainty of the crowd’s fickle tastes and receptivity to their wares, besides the intimidation of being stationed alongside the best of the best.
Looking around from booth to booth you will discover an extravagant assortment of glazes, shapes, and colors. There is pottery that is functional and decorative, providing everyone with a difficult decision on where to spend their discretionary dollars. The pottery offerings are both wonderful and whimsical.
There is everything you can think of that could be made out of pottery, from Appalachian bread warmers, to French butter bells, to the plain bizarre. From sensational ascetics to the abstract art of Steampunk, from candleholders to clocks, from jewelry to ornaments, from pie-plates to casserole dishes, an absolutely amazing display of imagination and creativity surrounds you. From water pitchers to flower planters, coffee mugs to soup bowls, from birdhouses to hummingbird feeders, from the complex to the simple, this festival offers a cornucopia of creative brilliance.
The potters themselves are an inspiration to watch in action as well. All day long they are constantly engaging with and encouraging their customers to handle their wares while they field all sorts of questions. “Yes it’s microwave and dishwasher safe, yes it works, no that was the last one.” and on and on it goes.
These potters patiently practiced a unique type of customer service. Like Old World shopkeepers with dirt under their fingernails, they maintain a pleasant attitude while trying to give each customer their full attention while they attempt to exchange money with the previous customer. There’s an art to juggling the centrifugal force of a crowd of customers and I imagine it is emotionally exhausting to try to keep a smile and to genuinely thank dozens of people and exchange money over the shoulder with one person and carry on a conversation with another, all without employees to help run the cash register.
From the subdued and subtle to the interactive, there’s a variety of potters participating in the festival’s live demonstrations. On the clock there are seasoned potters scheduled to sit at the wheel, throwing all day long and offering titbits of advice for the novices who watch. Of all of those scheduled, none of the events gather a crowd like Joe’s raku firing.
Part of Joe Frank McKee’s charm is his shtick that octogenarian women swoon over. He carries himself like the cool uncle who takes you to get your first tattoo. His personality is a clever combination of wit and wisdom.
He dresses the part, he wears shorts no matter the weather, his shirts always have ragged sleeves, I’ve never seen him without his worn out Crocs, but his mischievous eyes are the most outstanding of his grizzled features. Bearing a slight resemblance to Timothy Leary in the eyes, hands down, Joe steals the show every year. I know from experience because my wife and I have come for well over a decade and we’ve seen him enthrall many an audience.
Joe’s showmanship is a blend of part guru, part hippie, and part stand-up comedian. If you close your eyes and just listen to him, the cadence of Joe’s voice almost sounds like Bill Murray. Watching his ever present smile behind his gray, nicotine stained beard leaves the impression he either enjoyed reading Salinger or watching Belushi on SNL when he snuck his first sip of beer.
It is obvious Joe is loving the interaction with his mesmerized crowd, He is energized by their interaction and as he pulls a previously bisque fired piece of pottery out of an insulated garbage can that is heated by propane to around 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, he sprays alcohol on the hot pottery and lights his raku piece like a chef working the hibachi grill, cracking jokes the entire time.
The raku firing creates such a draw because the pottery pieces somehow undergo a metamorphosis through oxidation, leaving them with a metallic appearance. With a faint hint of Southwestern artwork, creating colors similar to a cloudy sunset drenched in a rainbow, even the smallest of these pieces of raku pottery easily fetches a few hundred dollars.
With a gardener’s spray jug, Joe pumps up the air pressure and saturates the heated piece of clay with alcohol, he ignites the piece of pottery while rotating it on a spinning wheel, then carefully choosing the sprayer with water and douses it. Then, he hoists the hot pottery from the wheel, places it in a bed of sand, lays a piece of paper on top of the piece of pottery for the carbon process (sometimes he will sprinkle sweeteners or even place horsehair on the pottery) and he quickly covers the scorched pot with a glass bowl creating an instant vacuum.
To build even more suspense, Joe announces that one of his groupies has a stopwatch and is giving Joe a four minute countdown. Embracing his celebrity status, Joe generates a Mystic’s type of drama for his audience as he explains in great detail the unpredictable and capricious nature of raku. Joe brags about his “Pottery groupies” seated at his feet like disciples in their folding camp chairs, telling the rest of us they are a faithful group that has followed him for 15 years and running.
During Joe’s demonstration he fumbles his second pot he pulled from the heated garbage can, nearly dropping it on the ground as the crowd gasped in unison “oooohhhhhhh no!” Like a lion tamer saving the crowd from being maimed or eaten, Joe quickly recovered both the pottery and his composure.
Even though Helene ravaged this region merely 5 weeks ago, there is ongoing damage beyond the destruction. For the folks who set up here, this is not a hobby for them, it’s how they earn their livelihood. Life has gone on for many people in the region, but there’s a ripple effect from the disaster, with many of the bridges and roads still out multiple craft fairs have unfortunately been canceled all across the region for the foreseeable future. Yet, these potters rely on these festivals to earn their money.
Clearly, these potters do not see each other as competition, there is definitely a palpable sense of community. I overhear a couple of potters even talking about a ceramics charitable fund that’s being started for the Flood.
Joe confides in me that they have a conclave of around 24 fellow potters who were planning another festival, but 14 of their friends are missing, they have not been able to make contact with the 14 potters since the hurricane. Joe averts his eyes and fidgets with some of his pieces and shares with me that when the festival is over and all of the potters have packed up, he and his colleagues will drive the back roads until they find their 14 missing friends who are still unaccounted for.
