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“People ask me why I don’t have someone else roll my coils. But rolling coils I find is very therapeutic,” Pat says. Knowing
that she took an 18-year hiatus from pottery to pursue energy work makes her statement that much more relevant.
“Penland was always this place that I was familiar with,” she says.
“January is so very quiet here compared to December,” she says.
“I was reading the catalogue. There was a class and it was beginner
and it said glassblowing and I thought, ‘That sounds interesting.’”
“I went there to alleviate boredom! I called home the first night
and said, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
She says she was lucky to find an instructor who truly liked
beginners.
“The story could have come out very differently at any point,”
she says.
She first met Dale Chihuly in Charlotte at the Mint Museum
not long after she began glassblowing.
After she returned to Cedar Creek and built her studio, gallery
manager Jennifer Dolan appeared one day, saying, “Somebody just
called and wanted to know if they could bring Dale Chihuly out
next week to visit your studio.”
It was November, a very busy month for Cedar Creek.
Lisa laughs, recalling how she replied, “I’m really too busy for
this. I don’t know who is calling but that’s pretty funny. That’s
just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard because
Dale Chihuly doesn’t call up and ask if he can visit a glass studio.”
She assumed someone was playing a practical joke on her.
“It’s the kind of thing I would do to somebody else,” she
admits.
When the visit was confirmed for the following Tuesday, she
made sure to be in her studio blowing glass.
“I had just started a piece when he got there,” she says. “He
sat and watched me blow that piece and finish it. We talked for
a little while. It was wonderful for me. I think more than any
other glassblower, people I come in contact with ask me, ‘Do you
know Dale Chihuly? Have you ever heard of Dale Chihuly? I just
saw this thing on PBS about Dale Chihuly. I went to the Dale
Chihuly exhibition.’ He has opened doors for all American glass-blowers
and probably glassblowers around the world … just by
making people aware of just what glass is and how magnificent it
can be. He’s gotten people excited about glass. Most people can’t
afford to buy Dale Chihuly’s work, but they can still love glass and
buy somebody else’s work. I got a chance to thank him for all that
he had done — for me in business, as a glassblower and making it
in this world.”
Inside Lisa’s studio is a framed photo of her and the famed glass
sculptor. It is not the first thing you see, rather the last.
Opposite, from top: Pat Oakley rolls porcelain clay coils.
Oakley forms the base of a pot on a banding wheel. Inside
Cedar Creek Gallery, pottery is displayed among handmade
originals. Above: Teapot by Jackson Gray. The gallery will
hold a juried teapot show and sale in summer 2014 from
mid-May through mid-August. Held once every three years,
the invitation is extended to more than 150 artists.
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
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