NC Pottery Center Artist in Residence - Josh Floyd

Seagrove, NC - The North Carolina Pottery Center is pleased to announce the addition of Josh Floyd as our new Artist-in-Residence. Grant funding from the Wingate Charitable Foundation is allowing the center to restart its Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program. 

Josh comes to the center with a Bachelor of Arts with Art Concentration from Fairmont State University in West Virginia, and he has been making pots for over ten years. He studied for two years as an Artist-in-Residence at the Cub Creek Foundation in Appomattox, VA, and has worked two years as a studio and gallery assistant for Smicksburg Pottery in Pennsylvania. He has also been a studio assistant at the Penland School of Craft. Before accepting the position as the North Carolina Pottery Center’s AiR, he was working for the Laguna Clay Company in Byesville, OH, testing clays and glazes. While he enjoyed working for Laguna Clay, Josh’s goal was to return to the studio, something which the Pottery Center’s AiR program allows him to do. 

Josh characterizes his style as “striving to create beautiful and comfortable pots and aspiring to make work that will be used in the home, for coffee with friends or evening tea after a long day. I want my work to make it to the front of the cabinet and to survive a tumble about in the sink.” 

Describing his inspirations for pottery, Josh says, “I am drawn to the patinas of old, rusted cars in a field, or old barns in some state of disrepair, but still standing. A fondness for the past certainly finds its way into my pots as I reference crocks and jugs of early America. I am drawn not only to the simplicity and strength of the forms but to the ideas of local production and necessity. While industrial processes and societal norms have changed our needs, there is still a beauty in well made handcrafted items that will stand the test of time. Referencing these forms is not a desire to copy them but to find my own voice within them.” 

The Pottery Center is looking forward to having Josh as its AiR for the next two years. Lindsey Lambert, executive director, says, “Having Josh as our new AiR is literally a breath of fresh air.” Between Josh and our new Educational Program Manager and Project Coordinator, Emily Lassiter, we are looking to begin offering more educational programs and workshops, things which help us better fulfill our mission of promoting awareness and appreciation of the history, heritage and ongoing tradition of pottery making in our great state. 

Exhibitions are made possible through the generosity of our membership, the Mary and Elliott Wood Foundation, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the Windgate Charitable Foundation, and the John W. and Anna H. Hanes Foundation. This project was supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Thank you!

The mission of the North Carolina Pottery Center is to promote public awareness of and appreciation for the history, heritage, and ongoing tradition of pottery making in North Carolina. 

The Center is located at 233 East Avenue in Seagrove, NC. Hours of operation are Tue - Sat 10 am - 4 pm. For more information, please call 336.873.8430, visit ncpotterycenter.org, or find us on Facebook.

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