Take the wheel

Josh and Justine Riley share a passion for their art at Panther Creek Pottery.

Panther Creek Pottery: molded with passion

Story by JOHN CLAYTON

The pottery wheel helped Josh and Justine Riley find one another. It also led them to others with a passion for pottery. They call them “our people.”

“I got a degree in something besides art at Murray State, but I had found the clay community, and I love those folks,” says Josh Riley. “I went to go try a clay class, and it was just obvious, without a doubt, that these were my people. I could understand them. I just knew that I had to pursue it.” For the past 18 years, he has been doing just that — creating, teaching and learning. He traveled to Florida and met Justine at St. Petersburg College in the fall of 2007.

All of those roads led him back home in 2009 and to the creation of Panther Creek Pottery, named for the nearby creek that winds through the Western Kentucky hills. He finished at Murray State after studying computer science for four years before unearthing a passion for pottery. Justine Riley majored in the art form, finding a bond with the wheel just as Josh had done hundreds of miles away in Kentucky. She quickly adopted the major after her initial ceramics class. “It was my first art class, so I was also falling in love with the processes of art,” she says. “I walked by a ceramics studio and said, ‘You can get credit for doing that?’” she recalls. “Josh had his afternoons free and was just playing in clay.”

The romance had begun, and so did the unofficial beginnings of Panther Creek Pottery. “I guess when we met each other, it started then,” she says.

Moving to Mayfield was just part of the plan. Building a life out of the clay was a big element for the couple and, perhaps, the most challenging. “We had the idea seeded even back then,” Josh Riley says. “It’s really growing. It’s still got a ways to go, but it’s getting there.”

CARRYING ON

In addition to creating and selling Panther Creek pottery on consignment and at local markets, Riley sets up his wheel at area shows and events, teaching children and adults pottery. He jokingly calls getting their hands on clay “corrupting young minds.”

“All of our people want to share their process and their love affair with clay,” he says. “That’s the community in general — there are no secrets. If I wanted to know your clay recipe or your glaze recipe, it’s just out there for you and really easy to access. You just find your people.”

Justine Riley says she doesn’t work as much with the clay as she would like, but she has found another way to share her passion. She is also a book artist, and she published her second children’s book this past April. It’s called “Living with Pottery,” and it depicts the work of 26 potters through its illustrations.

“The book starts out about the simple, everyday joys of living with pots. People don’t have to do that now — it’s a choice to live with these handmade objects,” she says. “The illustrations are in watercolor, and the scenes are of pots in the home being used and waiting to be used. The words are kind of a poem, but it’s for children and adults. It’s about celebrating pottery in the home because these things are made by people. It’s about the process of pottery. It’s education and art, and it definitely has some different levels to it.”

The Rileys use the mugs, pots and containers they make, as well as those from friends and contemporaries. “Living with handmade things brings a richness to my life,” Justine Riley says. “It’s not glamorous or something everyone sees. It’s just the little parts of your life — like a morning cup of coffee in a mug, or the quilt my aunt made for me.”

TAKING SHAPE

If there’s a regret for Josh Riley, it’s only that he didn’t come to the clay and his people more quickly. “I found clay when I was 22 years old, and I really got into it, and I see these young folks coming up that have it in high schools and get an opportunity to have this experience a little bit sooner,” he says. “I think maybe I could have been a better potter sooner. So, I take the responsibility to expose folks to some of the ideas, at least, if not lay their hands on clay and corrupt the minds of the young with clay.

“It’s taken me so many places — we went to Japan and studied clay with a university, and we’ve gone to so many places and met so many interesting people. I just want to share it with folks.”

The learning process for beginners will not be without bumps in the road. “If you were never a friend of failure, pottery will make you a friend of failure,” says Justine Riley, who holds a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from Murray State.

But there will be success — eventually. “Give it a while,” she says. “There’s just a learning curve before you move on to the next step.”

To the Rileys, pottery continues to be about molding both clay and people. “It’s a nice way to slow down,” Justine Riley says. “Working with our hands is one of the things that makes us human, and out of that grows the responsibility to share it with others.”

Josh Riley works at the couple’s Panther Creek Pottery studio.

Josh Riley says he found “his people” when he took a pottery class at Murray State University.