This year, a Baker University staff member will bring both her passion and talent for pottery to the annual Maple Leaf Festival for others to enjoy and purchase for their own homes.
Advising and Tutoring Coordinator Sandy Davidson decided to sell her specialty artwork, a style of high-fire stoneware called Raku, during the Maple Leaf Festival this year.
“My goal is to sell functional art. Not only decorative, but also affordable,” Davidson said. “I recycle everything; I don’t throw anything away.”
She said after having been to the Maple Leaf Festival and seeing how successful some people were with their booths, she was inspired to try selling her own work.
“This will be my first year (selling) at Maple Leaf,” Davidson said. “For the past three years, I’ve kept thinking, ‘I’ve got to do this,’ because it’s my impression people buy stuff at Maple Leaf. I’m really excited.”
Senior Scott Driver said he is a fan of her work and said he thinks it will be popular at the festival.
“I’ve seen her stuff,” Driver said. “It’s going to sell very quickly.”
Davidson said her strong art background developed as a child.
“I was raised to believe that survival required food, shelter, laughter and art,” Davidson said. She was a senior in high school when her mother decided they should try pottery.
“Together in the mid-1970s, we took a ceramics class where we learned to wedge, coil, score, slip, slab, pinch and finally, to throw the clay,” Davidson said.
Davidson said she also took a pottery class and a hand-building class in Florida, but in spite of this, she has never done pottery continually over the past 30 years.
“It was an art I kept coming back to,” she said. “Each time I came back to pottery, I was stronger and better, and it inspired me to continue.”
She said a person must be in touch with himself for a piece of pottery to be completely centered.
“One of the hardest things is centering the clay on the wheel,” Davidson said. “What I learned is I couldn’t center clay on the wheel until I was centered in my life. You have to breathe … When I am ‘in my art,’ all is right with the world. I am unplugged from the high-tech and ordinary.”
Davidson produces her pottery in her basement, turning slabs of clay into masterpieces.
“I’ve got a pretty big space with big windows and lots of sunshine,” Davidson said.
She said the woman who used to own the home in the ’50s opened up her basement to make money by making meals for Baker students.
“It used to be a tea room for Baker students where they used to eat their lunches,” Davidson said. “I make my pottery there now.”
Davidson used to be an instructor of pottery for three years at the Kansas City Guild and also taught hand-building to kids at a community center one summer in San Diego. She no longer gives group lessons, but she does, however, give private tutorials.
Junior Tracie Spring said she took private lessons from Davidson last summer and made several pieces.
“I love it down there,” Spring said. “I think she has a really nice set-up. It’s really relaxing and comfortable, and Sandy’s a wonderful teacher.”
Driver also has been to her basement studio.
“I think it’s awesome that she has a pottery wheel in her basement,” he said.
Davidson said she gets everyone who steps into her home on her pottery wheel.
“They’ll take a block of clay on the wheel and spend an hour on it,” Davidson said.
Davidson said she decided at the last minute to have a stand at the Maple Leaf Festival. Three months earlier, she had no inventory, but she said that didn’t keep her from getting a spot at the festival.
“I didn’t set out to do this,” Davidson said. “I was three months late getting my application in, and I still got a great location.”