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OUR STORY AND PHILOSOPHY

AMANDA BARTEL
Potter, Instructor, Owner

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Welcome to White Lotus Pottery.  I'm Amanda Bartel, the artist behind each piece of stoneware made by hand in College Station, Texas.  I began my pottery career in Ithaca, New York when I asked a local artist for lessons and immediately fell in love with working at the wheel.  A few months later, my housemates and I built our own basement studio where we dove headfirst into the craft. When I met my husband, we moved out of town and started bouncing around the world (Germany, Russia, New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Connecticut, Virginia, and now Texas), and I was committed to finding a wheel wherever we went. 

 

I started stamping my pieces with a lotus flower while working at a ceramic studio in Berlin, Germany.  I am inspired by the flower’s beauty and symbolic meaning - from out of the muck, the lotus grows, just as a ball of clay is transformed into a beautiful piece of functional art with the help of an artist’s gentle hands and a little love.  It means so much knowing my work is out in the world and my hope is that the good energy that goes into making my pieces will fuel the homes and the hands of those who use them. 

 

Before becoming a full-time potter, I spent over a decade as an occupational therapist - a profession founded on the idea that meaningful activity is the best way to support health and wellbeing.  It has been so fulfilling to apply my background as a therapist to the incredibly therapeutic experience of working with clay.  Sitting at the potter’s wheel is a daily invitation to center myself as I center the clay.  It requires complete harmony of mind, body, and spirit.  Through my functional artwork, I hope to share that harmony with others by teaching the craft and producing pieces that can be integrated into everyday life.

Photography by Shay Purcell

THE STUDIO

One of the things I love most about pottery is how easily it can be shared with others.  Both the finished products and the making process itself lend themselves to inviting others in.  As we carefully emerge from a period of isolation, White Lotus Pottery is excited to invite you in for an experience that might be just what you've been seeking.  Our quaint studio is the perfect space to learn a new skill and make something you are proud of in the company a supportive creative community. 

 

We have 4 wheels for small groups to come experiment and learn with skilled instructor and owner, Amanda Bartel. We also have a work space for learning handbuilding technique and our glaze collection is always growing as we experiment with new exciting cone 5/6 glazes that we make ourselves from raw chemicals here in the studio.   

We value having a clean, safe space for our visitors and studio members so we work as a team to keep the space dust-free.  We know how important it is to have a creative outlet and we have seen how restorative working with clay can be for mental health, physical health, and overall well-being.  We welcome all people to our studio and strive to serve our studio members with powerful and transformative experiences as we grow our clay community.

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Endless gratitude to Will Talamelli for creating this beautiful film.

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