The Magic City Ragtime and Jazz Festival Committee is excited to announce that Maria Trigo of Rock Creek Pottery has designed distinctive hand-thrown mugs for the Festival.  The mugs will have different unique glazes and will feature the Festival logo.  She will also be at the Festival all day on June 21 to demonstrate her craft.

Ms. Trigo and her husband are originally from Florida. When they retired, they decided to move to the mountains, and chose our area as the ideal place.  She said they love it here and have never regretted their decision, though they still have four children and ten grandchildren living in Florida.

Maria has been making art ever since as a child she watched her father draw and paint. She said she had always been particularly fascinated by ceramic art. She started working on a pottery wheel six or seven years ago.  To learn how to “throw” clay on a wheel, she attended classes, watched videos and worked with other artisans as she mastered her craft.  She now has two pottery wheels and two kilns at her home and has established Rock Creek Pottery to market her art.

The pottery wheel represents one of the world’s oldest crafts.  The first pottery wheels emerged about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia.  Although they were crude devices, they were an improvement over the previous methods of shaping clay by pinching and coiling it.  Over the years the method for turning the wheel improved from hand turning to using the feet to make the wheel rotate.  Although some potters still use the kick wheel, most wheels are now turned by electricity.  However, the method of producing pottery by “throwing” the clay on the wheel is essentially the same as it was thousands of years ago and just as fascinating to watch as a blob of clay is transformed into a piece of art.

Maria will be joined at the Festival by other skilled period artisans demonstrating their crafts and making it available to the public.   Marcella Buis will show how to produce amazing items utilizing common gourds.  Joseph and Samantha Hensley and Keith Williams will be making fiddles by hand and playing on them.  Don Hammond will show how a dulcimer is made and will be playing folk music on his instrument.  Carla Gover will provide folk music and dance.  Judy Collins is demonstrating hand quilting and will display many of her quilts and those of other area quilters.  Charlotte and Jeanette Underwood of Appalachian Agricultural Folkways will be teaching how our ancestors produced and processed food.  These artisans will add another fascinating dimension to our Ragtime and Jazz Festival.