DECATUR COUNTY, GA — Mary Ellen Free, ceramic artist and owner of River Oaks Pottery Studio in Bainbridge, has built a space where beginners and experienced artists alike can learn everything from wheel throwing to hand building.
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For Free, opening the studio was about giving people a place to slow down, create, and have fun. She says every step of making pottery reflects a different stage in life.
"So you start off, you center it, you learn how to pull it. Really getting in the mud and playing with it and having fun creating that. Then once it dries completely, then it goes for the first firing, which is called this fire. And so it gets very hot. It gets, you know, up to maybe 1,700 degrees. And at that point, you know, it becomes hard enough that you can handle more," Free said.
That message is what first drew Cheri Jaeger through the door three years ago. Jaeger wanted to step outside her comfort zone by learning hand-building, and that confidence has come full circle as she now builds artwork for others.
"It's a plaque for live free for her to take to college and she's a real outdoors girl and it has the things that I know she loves," Jaeger said.
Now, Free's work is reaching a bigger audience. After spending the last year creating 21 ceramic pieces, she has been invited to showcase her work as a featured artist in LeMoyne Arts Through The Fire exhibition in Tallahassee.
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