Peterson’s pottery now on display

By: 
M. Claire May

Hot Springs potter Sarah Peterson returns to the Custer County Courthouse Art Gallery with her “fire, water, earth, and air” created pottery. Peterson’s pottery was previously exhibited in the Art Gallery in 2016.
Peterson retired on March 29, 2020, from her five-year and three-month position as a social services assistant at the Hot Springs Veterans Administration Hospital. She was an angel of “encouragement and safe presence.” 
Artist colleague and 20-year friend Mary Jo Marcy of Art Expressions Gallery asked Peterson on the very first day of her retirement to exhibit in the Courthouse Art Gallery.
“I did not know what I was going to do [after retirement], I had planned to continue a master’s degree in clinical counseling. I gave myself a couple of months to get used to the retirement idea...the universe was telling me what to do,” she said. “The decision was made by the messages I received from the universe.”
She resolved to step forward with her community and became a robust motivating presence, working passionately with the All About the Water group. This group seeks to keep the Fall River and Custer counties waters safe by spreading the word about Canadian companies’ uranium mining plans in these counties.
“The Biden administration had launched a $6 billion dollar campaign to save nuclear power plants at risk of closing,” she said. “The nuclear plants are old and need repairs and updates as an alternative to fossil fuels.”
Nevertheless, there was also something else needing repair besides power plants. Peterson’s Hummingbird Pottery Studio is in a 98-year-old house with an exposed, red sandstone foundation. Nevertheless, she has been putting her studio in order because she is “fired up” to continue full-time with the clay.
“The foundation is the same color of clay that I work with in my pottery,” she said. “I am in the earth! I am in a cave surrounded by the elements of my pottery,” she said.
She compares her work with a “geologic process.”
“[My] work with the clay is the same as the geologic process of how clay becomes the rock that takes eons to form, that same clay found in my home’s foundation,” she said. “I am continuing the geologic process in my studio; I am turning the clay into an art object.”
Peterson uses the “potter’s wheel” to throw and kilns to fire process to create her pieces.
Peterson explained the process of making the artwork The Hanging Mica that is in the exhibition.
“The first part is throwing the shallow plate using the mica flecked red clay used by the Anasazi,” she said. The Anasazi were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States. The four states are Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.
“I burnish the unfired plate which brings out the sparkle,” she said.
Burnishing pottery is a technique in which clay is polished to a sheen without glaze using an implement such as a smooth stone.
“Like the Moroccan tagine and ancient Anasazi cookware, my mica in the clay acts as an insulator, prohibiting cracking when put directly into the cooking fire. The unglazed pottery must be seasoned with olive oil,” Peterson said. 
Peterson found the mica stone for the plate’s center south of Custer.
“I am fascinated by rock and minerals’ effects on human beings. Mica gives us a reflection of ourselves, positive and negative. They give us an opportunity to grow,” she said. “When a person finds their passion or gift, that becomes their strength. We become human, confident and strong when the positive is encouraged. Our strengths wipe out the weaknesses; art does that for me.”
Peterson’s born-of-earth pottery and Sierra Hopp’s creative, award-winning photography are available to view at Custer County Courthouse Art Gallery, 420 Mount Rushmore Road, second floor through August during regular courthouse hours, Monday through Friday. 

 

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