Carrie Ming

When I was a little girl my Mom made me endless batchesof homemade play-doh with flour, salt, water, food dye.  I would sculpt little pinch pots and bake them in my Holly Hobby Bake oven and then paint them with acrylics or water color.  One day, I noticed my neighbors selling lemonade, so at 8 years old, I joined the roadside commerce and set up a table with my play-doh pots. A very charitable, elder lady from down the road purchased 4 for a $1. It was with that transaction that my heart soared imagining that maybe one could be an artist or potter as a career.

I am nicknamed after my Great Great Aunt Carrie who was a porcelain decorator at Rookwood Pottery in Ohio, during it’s heyday. After it turned into a restaurant my Dad would take our family to eat there and we would sit inside the huge beehive kilns, the smoke marks still on the brick walls. We would eat spaghetti while he’d explain that this was where my Aunt worked. I could feel the energy and excitement of production still in the atmosphere. Growing up vacationing in Michigan, my parents purchased stoneware pottery from a potter’s yard side shed next to a farmhouse. Gardens dotted the landscape and I made a mental note that this was the life I too dreamed of. His pottery became part of our daily lives. I admired the way the glazes moved on the clay surface.

As for my ceramics, I love the life of being a studio potter, to study function, beauty, botanical imagery paired with traditional form. I made my love of clay official with a BFA in Ceramics and Textiles from the Oregon College of Art and Craft. I then spent my twenties apprenticing with many amazing potters, opened my first studio in my thirties in Fishtown, spent a decade teaching for the Old Art Building in Leland. I am thrilled to have discovered the Oliver Art Center of Frankfort, on the shores of Lake Michigan.  I love teaching. I love sharing what others have taught me, as learning is constant; tools and techniques to express our creativity through clay.