Following the success of its inaugural year, the Verde Valley Pottery Festival is returning for its second year and will be held at a new location at D.A.Ranch Estate Vineyards in Cornville. Potter Ben Roti founded this festival to try to build community amongst local potters. “It’s a vision of mine to help educate this community and raise awareness of our ceramics and try to build this community here,” says Ben, founder and director of the Verde Valley Pottery Festival. His biggest fear when it came to the first festival? That no one would show up. Thankfully that turned out to not be true. Over 750 people attended the two-day event in 2022. “All my artists were excellent of being willing to share and educate the community and help share what they do and their passion. And people were interested in that,” he says. “I thought it was so great that the Verde Valley holds such attention to a craft or an art form that sometimes maybe isn’t thought of all that often.”
At this year’s festival, attendees can anticipate a kid’s clay activity, food trucks, wine from D.A.Ranch (the tasting room will be open from noon to 6 p.m. each day) and seeing work from 13 ceramicists. “People should really look forward to connecting to ceramic artists that are interested in expanding the reach and increasing the understanding of contemporary studio pottery,” he says.
Expect to watch live demonstrations, listen to public lectures and see exclusive work from artists. Mediums you might see include traditional plates, mugs, bowls and figurative sculptures. Ben tells us that most artists had about 100 pieces each at last year’s festival. “The community feedback that I received from the first one was that people have never seen or experienced anything like this, a pottery festival that was fun, enjoyable, something that they learned about,” he says. “Bringing that back and raising the bar for what we’re able to provide will be the mission for the second one to continue to bring that level of engagement to our community.” − Teresa K. Traverse
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