Local News - September 2003

Potter shows his stuff at Iron Station

By SARAH GRANO, Staff Writer

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IRON STATION — For 45 minutes fourth-graders sat mesmerized by a man in overalls shaping clay.

“I thought their eyes were going to pop out,” said Rhonda Hagar, principal of Iron Station Elementary.

Sid Luck, a folk potter who has his pottery on display in the Mint Museum, drove to the school from Seagrove.

“I left at four in the morning, so I’m operating on some special energy right now,” he said.

Luck made several vases and jugs in front of the children and explained to them the process of creating a piece of pottery.

The last thing he made in front of Ms. Mowry’s fourth- grade class was a face jug with its tongue sticking out.

“The best part was watching him make that face jug,” said Tyler Burrell, a fourth-grader. “It looked freaky.”

Luck told the class that face jugs are a North Carolina tradition that goes back hundreds of years.

The Luck family has been creating pottery for six generations.

Luck says that pottery was his first love.

“My dad taught me how to do it when I was about 10-years-old, even though there wasn’t much need for it anymore,” Luck said.

“He said that me and my brother needed to stay out of the swimming hole and not be fishing all the time. He thought we needed something to do to keep us out of trouble.”

Luck has also taught his sons the craft.

Fourth-grade students at Iron Station will soon get a chance to work with clay themselves.

They have studied pottery since the start of the school year, and the next step is for them to make ornaments in the style of face jugs.

Their art teacher, Jennifer Childers, believes that seeing a live demonstration has made them more eager to create pottery.

“They were really excited to see someone work,” said Childers. “Especially someone who has been doing this his whole life.”

Pottery used to be necessary to everyday life, Luck told the students. It wasn’t until the mid ‘50s that it became unnecessary.

“Now it’s called an art,” he said. “It requires a lot of skill to take a piece of mud and throw it on a spinning wheel and make something out of it.”

Luck has been all over North Carolina showing elementary school students how he makes pottery.

Childers called him after she heard how much the students loved him at S. Ray Lowder Elementary.

Luck had been to S. Ray Lowder a week before he came to Iron Station, and he also visited the school last year.

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Staff Writer Sarah Grano can be reached at 704-735-3031 or sgrano@ltnews.com

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© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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