Potters Market at the Mint
September 27, 2025
Christina Bendo Pottery, Waynesville NC
I use a combination of wheel throwing and handbuilding techniques to create my forms. The pieces are then decorated with colored clay slips and wax resist brushwork of botanical and avian motifs. I fire my work in a bourry box wood kiln and introduce salt to glaze the wares.
I grew up helping my parents grow food in the rich red clay soil of Virginia and exploring the fields and forest of our property on the Potomac River. It seems a natural progression that I now work in a craft that uses the same raw materials needed to grow food in order to make objects used to serve it. My primary construction tools are the wheel and slab roller. I often throw pieces on the wheel that will be altered and combined with other parts to create more complex forms. I also produce slab plates and dishes using handmade hump and slump molds. I first became interested in using local clays after digging miocene marine clay where I was living in Virginia, and in 2017 moved to North Carolina to further study raw materials at STARworks Center for Creative Enterprises. Since my transformative time working there, I use a clay body and slips containing local North Carolina clay, and fire with wood and salt in the tradition of a long line of North Carolina potters in order to further a connection to the geological and human history of place. The pots are decorated with flora and fauna observed while hiking, foraging, and studying field guides. My functional vessels, intended for daily use, serve as reminders that whether we are the kind of being to eat a skillfully prepared meal off of a plate produced by human technology, or the kind that eats berries while dangling from a branch in the breeze, we are all involved in an interconnected food chain fueled by the resources of the earth and cycles of living and dying.