- Contributed Bevolin Ashley, left, with pieces of her pottery and prospective buyer Anne Williams, who is also her pottery instructor.
BEVOLIN Ashley, a Jamaican living in Silver Spring, Maryland, began taking pottery lessons after leaving work in the evenings as much to channel her creative skills as to use her spare time profitably.
Now she is hooked on pottery, and happily discovering its aesthetic possibilities and therapeutic and fulfilling effects.
Every winter for the last couple of years, Ms. Ashley has joined other first-rate potters in her community in displaying their work at the annual pottery sale held in Langley Park Community Centre, Langley Park, Maryland.
But let her tell her story.
"My first love was to learn to play the piano. I started that but couldn't cope at the advanced level. So I paid for my nephew's first piano lessons in the hope that he would learn fast and then teach me at a slower pace at home.
"Dwayne is now a big-time pianist and I still haven't learned to my satisfaction, to play the piano, but it still remains my goal."
According to Ms Ashley, she thought: "What next?"
She had always liked to make things with her hands, "So when a friend showed me some pottery pieces she had made at a pottery studio in her neighbourhood, I just couldn't wait to find a pottery studio in my vicinity.
"I guess I was looking too far from home because all along, the community centre pottery studio was just five minutes' walk from my home and I never found out about it until a few years later when a co-worker who attended classes there took some of her pieces to work."
She said she started attending pottery classes immediately after that.
"I struggled for more than a year just to make simple bowls and mugs," Ms Ashley said.
But soon after that she "got the hang of what I was doing. Now, I'm pleased to say I have gotten great compliments on the pieces I've made."
Now a far cry from the days when it was a major accomplishment for her to fashion a simple bowl or a mug, she now makes exquisite and attractive dinner plates, salad plates, serving bowls, cups and saucers, conversation display pieces, soup bowls, serving bowls, cookie/sugar jars, creamers, pitchers, personalized cups and bowls.
"I just made two bells," Ms Ashley said. "Do you have an idea? I can turn it into pottery for you. What can I say? I am just hooked on pottery," she added.
