Rebuild Updates

This page will be updated periodically with the details of our rebuild efforts. The oldest updates are located at the bottom of this page. The newest updates will be added to the top. Thank you for your interest in our recovery and rebuild!

Update from April 14th, 2025

Refinished Floors & Fresh Coat of Paint

Update from March 19th, 2025

Donated studio furniture

We picked up the generous donation of studio furniture from Nick Moen, owner of The Bright Angle, from his space on South Slope. The Bright Angle was an Asheville studio that designed and created porcelain slip-cast home decor and lighting. Nick reached out to us because he made the hard decision to close his own studio and was looking to donate the furniture in his workspace to someone who would use them and he was on a very tight timeline to move. We also gave Nick a donation for the wonderful items to help him in his new season as a potter. We love helping each other.

We loaded up all the donated wooden furniture into a 20 ft U-Haul and drove it back to the apple barn for storage. Thank you so much, Nick! We can’t wait to have the studio up and running again so you can come see your donations put to good use!

Update from March 15th, 2025

Our new studio layout

We’ve finalized our layout plans with the immeasurable help of Carrie Schultz of Alder Designs. After several meetings discussing the flow of a working studio, we’ve come up with a great design to break up our new 18,000 square foot space. Seeing it on paper makes our large 18,000 sq. ft space feel less daunting and much more exciting!

Some of the new spaces include an expanded teaching center with two different classrooms, affordable rental studios for other displaced artists, and an expanded clay company to accommodate WNC pottery community’s needs.

Of course like before, we’ll have designated spaces for our gallery where Resident Artists can sell their work, a Hands-on-Workshop space where we will host week-long and weekend-long workshops, a recording studio for online classes, our Independent Study and Mentoring studio for our Advanced Studies students, and dedicated studio space for our Resident Artists.

Now that the design is finalized, we’ll send it off to the plumbers, electricians, and HVAC contractors to add the details of their projects to the overall plan. Once their plans come back, everything goes to our landlord for approval. After our landlord gives the green light, we’ll finally be able to submit the plans to the city for work permits. Since we all know how slow the bureaucracy can be, we’ll continue chugging along with other work for the studio while we wait.

The Village Potters Clay Center at Westgate Plaza architecture plans — *Latest layout of our floor plan. Things are likely to change or shift once we get into the space.*

The Moveable Wall Prototypes

You may be wondering, how are these crazy clay people planning on dividing up this humongous space? Over the years with our studio in the River Arts District, we’ve learned that having the flexibility to change a space is a necessity. Therefore rather than building permanent walls up to the 20ft ceilings, we are creating moveable walls! These walls will allow us to change up and evolve each of the spaces, giving a little more square footage here and taking some away from there, as we need.

We’re creating two different types of moveable walls. One that is thin and more sound absorbent while also having rigidity. The thinner walls are made up of a 1.5” piece of insulation foam boards sandwiched between two ¼” plywood sheets. The other type is sturdier and more polished for our gallery space. George Rolland has come up with the wall designs, after hours of research into different materials and methods of construction. Before sourcing the material in bulk for the walls, we decided to test out the designs on a small scale first.

Karen Dubois painting adhesive on a sheet of foam insulation

The majority of the walls in the new studio will be the thinner kind. Some of them will be on wheels but most of them will be anchored to or placed between shelving units. The other moveable walls for the gallery space take much more effort and building expertise to construct. Thankfully we only need to make eight to twelve of these. That still sounds like a lot, especially considering how long they each take to build. But compared to the dozens of thinner walls we need, only making twelve feels like a piece of cake!

The gallery walls are 8 ft high, 8 ft wide, and 2 ft deep with a hollow interior. These walls are made up entirely of plywood of different thicknesses. We cut out the interior of 2’ x 8’ pieces of plywood to make what we’re calling “ribs” that act as the studs of the wall. After spacing out the ribs with support brackets, the framing was complete! All of these walls will be on wheels and will have leveling feet. The walls are finished by stapling thin sheets of plywood to the wall faces, mending the seam where the plywood meets, and a nice coat of white paint. We are going to finish the ends of these wall sections by attaching a piece of plywood using strong magnets. This way, we can take off the end panels to get inside the walls if we need to store anything in there. Or if we need to play hide and seek.

You may be wondering why these gallery walls are so thick. One of the main reasons for them to be this deep is to make sure the walls aren’t at risk of tipping over. We are also planning to cut out small alcoves in some of these walls to display pots in. Those alcoves will be on the front, gallery facing side of these walls. On the backside of some of these walls, we’re hoping to build out some shelving. This storage space will let us store our wrapping materials like our bags and wrapping paper for when someone purchases a pot.

It felt incredibly satisfying to see the finished product after being part of every step. George was also very pleased with the final wall after only imagining it in his head. Building this prototype wall also feels incredibly empowering! I truly don’t think there is anything George can’t do!

*George Rolland cutting a piece of plywood in half for the moveable gallery walls on a table saw*

*Katie Meili Messersmith laying on the floor to get a better vantage point for screwing in the support brackets*

Katie Meili Messersmith sanding down the seam between the two sheets of plywood that make up the face of the wall while George Rolland checks to see if the bonding agent used to cover the seam is dry enough to sand down

In addition to the progress on our prototype walls, we’ve been prepping the space for a new coat of paint. Two weekends ago, we had a generous group of volunteers come and tape the vinyl base boards. Many hands make light work! We were able to finish taping our entire 18,000 sq. ft. space in only one and a half hours! Thank you to those of you who sacrificed your Saturday morning to help us! We can’t wait to see how this fresh coat of paint transforms our studio.

Our space is currently lit by cool-toned fluorescent bulbs. We are hoping to change out the bulbs to a warmer, softer light. We’re waiting to finalize the paint color until we can get some of those warmer-toned light bulbs. Our plan is to change out the bulbs in the Hands-on-Workshop space (the room on the bottom of the floor plan above) and then paint sample colors in there. This will be the best way to judge what color will be best in the new space. Once we pick the paint color, then we’ll get to work!

*George Rolland and Sarah Wells Rolland checking out different paint sample colors*

Donated Kilns

During this hard time recovering from the destruction, we’ve continuously been reminded of how kind people can be. We are uplifted by someone’s generosity on a daily basis!

One of the biggest blessings has come from Rich Brown of Pottery32. He donated two brand new Olympic kilns to our new facility. One is a front loading electric kiln and the second is a front-loading gas kiln. Sarah and George picked up these two incredible gifts from Atlanta on Tuesday Feb. 25th, 2025. Thank you, Rich! For good luck while firing these beauties in our new facility, at least one of the two kilns will be named after him.

These two kilns are a great start to rebuilding our facility but we lost all of the 10 kilns (of varying firing atmospheres) that we had before the flood. Check out our list of equipment needs HERE.

*George Rolland tying down the donated kilns to a trailer for safe travels from Atlanta to Asheville*

Update from February 4th, 2025

Roadtrip up north!

The first week of February, Sarah and George took a road trip up to VA and PA to pick up donated studio supplies and equipment. Sarah & George’s first stop was in Virginia to visit Ken Moore. He graciously donated his late wife’s, Julie Moore, studio to our recovery efforts. He donated many things but a few major pieces were a Skutt kiln, pug mill, a slab roller, and Julie’s personal wheel. Sarah has written a blog about her and George’s connection with Ken and his love for Julie. We will post that soon! Sarah and George’s second stop was up to western PA to pick up more supplies from Jim & Joanne Arnone. Joanne is an incredible accomplished porcelain ceramic artist, who has studied with many master potters. One major contribution from them was a Brent wheel and glaze kitchen ingredients. We also received several small tools and supplies, like hand tools and bats from the Arnones’ that we will use in our teaching center. With those two large studio donations, the 26ft U-Haul that George rented filled up quite nicely. The trip back to NC went smoothly and those donations were unloaded into the apple barn for storing until the new space is ready.

*George Rolland and Sarah Wells Rolland* *sitting with Ken Moore who donated his late wife’s, Julie, studio* *to us*

Update from our GoFundMe on February 2nd, 2025

We have a new studio space!

*Our new studio space at 44 Westgate Parkway. It is a big empty blank slate, that we are excited to transform into a vibrant ceramic studio!*

Exciting news!!! We have signed a lease on a new facility centrally located in Asheville NC on Friday. We have been arduously negotiating this lease since Nov 2024. Now, If they sign it, and we believe they will, we will be announcing our new location this week.

We will begin the up fitting of the new center on Feb 10th. and will be working with a wonderful architect, electricians, plumbers, build walls, build display pedestals and more. We have so many volunteers offering to come help! We expect the work to take at least 3 months.

Updates from October 2024 through January 2025

Refurbishing our Wheels & Slab rollers

*The dream team that worked on refurbishing all of the mechanical components of our equipment – Julia Mann, Karen Dubois, and George Rolland*

With George Rolland’s expertise and Karen Dubois and Julia Mann’s detailed work, this dream team was able to get 35 out of 37 wheels working again, despite them being submerged in the flood waters. They were able to achieve this miraculous work with an innumerable amount of volunteer hours and only $1000 in parts. Their refurbishing efforts are integral to our recovery. We won’t have to invest in all that equipment to start up again because of their dedicated work. Sarah Wells Rolland’s sister, Mary, has generously been feeding the barn crew lunch on the days they’re working there. She has been doing this every weekday they’re working since November!

Washing the mud off our Salvage Equipment and Rescued Pottery

*Lori Theriault and Katie Meili Messersmith power-washing the ware* *carts that were salvaged from the studio*

We were lucky enough to have a George Rolland’s friend offer for us to utilize his retired apple orchard barn to store the equipment that we were able to salvage from our studio. This was an incredible gift because we wouldn’t have been able to store or clean our equipment without this space! Because the apple barn is located in Waynesville and its water system is connected to a spring, it had water before the rest of the city of Asheville. We were able to power-wash and clean our equipment before the corrosive mud detrimentally rusted anything. We had teams of volunteers come out to the apple barn for weeks after the flood, generously come help us. These volunteers were family friends, students of our studio, members of our TVP community, and members of the general WNC pottery community, etc. We are indebted to them for their hard work and time. It sure does take a village! The volunteers were managed by George Rolland, Julia Mann, and Karen Dubois.

Trying to save anything we could…

*Katie Meili Messersmith standing in the Resident Potter glaze room holding some of her broken pieces*

We spent nearly 8 days straight down at the river trying to pull whatever we could save out of our flooded studio. We were in a mad dash to do this because the landlords of our building, Riverview Station, also needed to get the building emptied so that mold wouldn’t grow. We took 10+ loads of equipment out of our studio in a 26ft Penske truck. This was grueling and gross work as we were trudging through toxic mud, trying not to slip, and lifting heavy equipment. We also saved several van-loads worth of pottery.

Update after Hurricane Helene hit Asheville on September 27th, 2024

When the flood waters came…

The Village Potters Clay Center was a thriving wonderful creative community. It was a 14,000 square foot facility with studios, galleries, and teaching center. It was a thriving creative community that touched the lives of so many people. We sustained the livelihood of many artists, taught classes and workshops. We had 17 kilns, 37 wheels, 4 slab rollers and all the things needed to support 7 resident potters, 14 advanced studies potters, 6 apprentices, a Hands-on-Workshop studio, Incubator studios for 8 emerging ceramic artists and on average 90-100 enrolled students in our weekly classes. Our mission was bigger than any one of us. We love pots but we love people even more!

We lost it all. The aftermath of Hurricane Helene has been devastating. The River Arts District of Asheville was filled with over 26 ft of water. This is only one location of many throughout the region simply washed away. We have been so heartbroken to see families, homes, business, and lives destroyed. These are unprecedented times. Though our beautiful space for resident and emerging potters has been devastated by the floodwaters, we feel blessed that we have each other at this time. We are incredibly grateful to our community and the love and support shown us in this great time of need.

After several days of shock, despair and grief we are ready to clean up and rebuild. We have decided that our mission is not done. We will rise again and are committed to find a new location and rebuild. We have a plan to move to a different area of the city outside of the flood plain. We are so thankful for any and all contributions and your support of this cause. We are going to use any funds raised to rebuild in a new location and fulfill our mission to raise the next generation of potters. Any surplus will be given to the arts community in need surrounding us.

We will continue telling our story and adding more of our plans to this fundraising page once we get through this first phase of evacuating our current facility. We are currently fully engaged with clean up and salvaging anything that can be salvaged. This is taking our full focus right now. We will continue to update you all as this process unfolds. We are so grateful for your encouragement, your prayers,and any and all contributions.