OK, we have a category, Not About Seagrove Pottery, now we also have a category, About Seagrove Pottery – officially. Yes, we’ve done a lot of entries about Seagrove, NC’s pottery community – whether it be about the North Carolina Pottery Center and its efforts to stay open in difficult financial times, or pottery events taking place in Seagrove, but now it officially has a category of it own – well, really two if you count the Not About Seagrove Pottery category as somehow it always seems to end up in those entries too.
Well, ever since Carolina Arts has been covering visual arts in Seagrove we have had a basic problem. It was not a problem adding the NC Pottery Center’s exhibits in our NC Institutional Gallery listings, but how could we fit the commercial potteries into the NC Commercial Gallery listings – there are over 100 in the area. That addition would take up almost two pages in the paper and with out some advertising return to offset that space – we just couldn’t afford it – especially now. This fact always bothered me. For awhile we did list a few potteries, but that was not fair to the rest.
Then, one day it hit me. You know like when the light bulb goes off over someone’s head in a cartoon. Why wasn’t I including the potteries on our website version of the paper – Carolina Arts Online? Really, why? I can’t say other than perhaps I subconsciously knew how much work that would be getting all that info together.
Well, each month I have a few free days where no deadline is hanging over my head – usually that means taking care of overdue yard work, but when the light bulb went off this month – it happened to be raining – everyday. Plus, surely a lot of this info was available on the internet – Seagrove does have several pottery organizations offering this info. So I started on my quest and something like 94 pottery listings later we now have most of the Seagrove area potteries included on our NC Commercial Gallery listings.
There are a few we couldn’t find info about, and I’m sure like all internet listings, some info has changed and even some potteries may have moved or closed, but updating this info will be up to the individual potteries. Just send us an e-mail with corrections at (info@carolinaarts.com).
There were also a few exceptions – there always are. There were some potteries listed as Seagrove potteries, but in reality they were located in cities almost 50 miles away. I didn’t include them. We have a policy of listing some locations near each other together – like Davidson and Cornelius, NC, in with Charlotte, NC, area galleries and Mt. Pleasant, Isle of Palms, and Sullivan’s Island in SC, together, but we have never combined areas almost 50 miles apart. If it’s just 10 – 20 miles well that’s close enough especially when listing a few under a different heading takes up more room. So that’s why we left some out that were included in some of these organization’s listings.
So, I hope you take advantage of these new listings and can now see how unique an area Seagrove really is as an arts destination. The city of Charleston, SC, has about 100 art galleries in the area, but we’d be comparing an apple with a single raisin – Seagrove doesn’t have a McDonalds or a Wal-Mart – imagine that. Really, imagine that and you’ll soon realize how nice an area this is. You can get your Mickey-D or big box fixes in Asheboro, NC, just 15 minutes away. What Seagrove has is potteries – lots of them and the NC Pottery Center. I’d say what more could you want, but living in a community even smaller than Seagrove, I won’t insult the people who live there. I’m not fond of driving 15 – 20 minutes away for just about everything, but I also like where I live and I know the people in Seagrove do too.
Now you’ll be able to see how a trip to Seagrove is like going to a big outdoor mall of pottery – with plenty of parking. The big difference is – all the pottery is made right there by local potters.