The Verde Valley Pottery Festival will be returning for its second year on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 18 and 19, at D.A. Ranch Estate Vineyards in Cornville.
Ceramicist Ben Roti, the festival’s founder, was inspired to create the festival after having participated in the Sedona Open Studios Tour at his studio in Camp Verde. Roti had invited a handful of ceramic artist friends to his studio during the event, which led to a discussion of how much they enjoyed creating together and how they could plan their own event.
Roti studied ceramics at the University of Iowa and later worked with a world renowned ceramicist, Don Reitz, in the Clarkdale area. In 2020, Roti decided to establish his own studio in Camp Verde, where he creates his own work and hosts classes.
The first pottery festival took place at Roti’s studio space in Camp Verde with 10 artists who either lived in Arizona or were connected to the state in some way.
“We called it the Verde Valley Pottery Festival with the idea that we’d like to promote education and awareness of ceramics in this area,” Roti said.
The festival attracted over 750 attendees and quickly outgrew its original space, so this year’s event will be held at D.A. Ranch Estate Vineyards to accommodate more guests.
“Our family is thrilled to host the upcoming Verde Valley Pottery Festival,” ranch brand manager Alexis Petznick said in a press release. “We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate and look forward to welcoming the artists and festival guests to D.A. Ranch.”
Another new addition to the festival will be First Pick Friday, a ticketed event that will allow serious collectors or appreciators of ceramics to have the first opportunity to purchase artists’ work.
This year’s event will feature the same artists as last year, plus three new artists. “They’re all great ceramic artists in their own right and they’re all making really wonderful work,” Roti said.
Each of the artists will be offering a demonstration of their working process for attendees.
“We tried to help educate the community that maybe didn’t understand why a mug was priced the way it was or how much time it actually takes and all the steps that are involved with it,” Roti said.
In addition to the demonstrations, there will be food trucks, live music, kids’ activities and pottery for sale.
A big draw for the festival last year was a free handmade cup for the first 40 attendees. Roti said that people were lining up early at the doors to get one of the cups, and that will continue at this year’s festival.
Heather Spontak, one of the participating artists, lives in Bisbee and creates functional, botanically inspired wheel-thrown work.
“I’m most excited that we have some additional artists with us,” said Spontak. “The festival is growing … I’m really proud of that.”
Spontak does mid-range ceramic work with lots of earthy colors and depictions of local and regional plant life. She will be doing a demonstration with fellow artist Rena Hamilton to showcase their processes for decorating clay pieces.
“I’m hoping to get people thinking a little bit more about how they can adapt some of those techniques for their own work,” Spontak said. “They can take that home and say, oh, maybe I could try this out.”
Jason Bohnert, an artist based out of Flagstaff, will be demonstrating how to form functional vases with artist Tiffany Bailey. Bohnert primarily makes functional pottery for the table, such as coffee mugs, wine cups, plates and bowls; teapots are a specialty of his. He will be showing some of his teapots that were fired in the wood kilns at Northern Arizona University as well as his most recent body of work, which is more sculptural.
“It was really rewarding,” Bohnert said of last year’s festival. “We put so much effort and energy into planning it for the first year and we didn’t know if anyone was going to show up. It was exciting to see that there was interest and so many people wanted to come out and see what the festival was all about. It was so great to see the first one be so successful in terms of the turnout and how positively people responded to the event.”
“We’d love to see this continue to grow and invite more artists and change artist lineups as the future years evolve,” Roti said.
For those who cannot attend, an online sale will launch concurrently with the festival’s opening on Saturday at 10 a.m. There will be over 100 pieces available for purchase that can be shipped anywhere in the country.
D.A. Ranch Estates Vineyard is located at 1901 Dancing Apache Road in Cornville. Festival hours will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday.
For more information, visit vvpotteryfestival.com.
