MANGUM POTTERY: FLOWING FROM YOUR FINGERTIPS

MANGUM POTTERY

FLOWING FROM YOUR FINGERTIPS

When Beth Mangum reflects on the 25 years that Mangum Pottery has been in downtown Weaverville, she can’t help but feel a deep sense of pride — at not only the artistic beehive at the heart of the community, but also the sincere importance of this collective in her backyard.

“We have so much local support here for artists, and that’s really a wonderful thing — this is a community that comes together,” Beth said. “Even through the obstacles and challenges we’ve faced over the years, it’s been such a rewarding lifestyle to be a working artist in this town.”

Alongside her husband and fellow potter, Rob, the couple have made a name for themselves in the rich, vibrant artistic realm at the heart of the creativity and culture of Western North Carolina.

Both Beth and Rob have a lifelong love of pottery, each with a different road to what ultimately became their passion and career. For Beth, it was playing in the clay of her backyard in Virginia as a young kid, digging out chunks of earth and pretending to make pots. On the other hand, Rob was raised in a pottery household, with his parents’ artisan crafters at their home studio outside of Sparta.

Meeting at the North Carolina State University School of Design, Beth was studying fibers and surface design, while Rob was working in graphics and illustration.

“He was pursuing other ideas and thinking about being an illustrator,” Beth said. “But, he then began to think about becoming a potter. It was something he had done all of his life and enjoyed doing. And while we were dating, I sort of jumped in and helped cut out pieces of clay for him, mixing glazes. Next thing I knew, I was actually making pots.”

The Mangums eventually found themselves in these mountains in the mid-1980s, which included Beth taking pottery and fiber classes at the storied Penland School of Craft.

“And I began to realize this area is where I wanted to live. People thought I was crazy when I said I was moving here, saying there was nothing here for me,” Beth reminisced with a laugh. “Downtown Asheville was pretty quiet at the time, and I had other artist friends moving here to open studios in the rundown buildings in the city. There really was a lot of opportu-