Local luminaries of pottery dirty hands to crowd's delight

Hunched over their potter's wheels, flecked by wet clay, potters from across Colorado worked against the unusual din of fanfare on Saturday: cheering, applause and the whir of digital cameras, capturing them in action.

Those are strange sounds for a breed accustomed to working in silence.

"Generally, potters have a pretty solitary lifestyle. This gives us the chance to have a social life," Mark Wong, the organizer of Clayfest in Manitou Springs, joked about the open-air pottery festival in Manitou Springs.

The 19th annual event featured a daylong slate of pottery-throwing contests for professionals and newcomers alike.

Before a large audience in Soda Springs Park, they competed in a series of timed trials to form the highest pots, the prettiest pots and sets of matching pots. Other contests judged swiftly built tea sets, pots formed by two-person teams, and the best pots shaped by one hand, or no hands at all.

A children's corner let kids apply their imaginations to blocks of clay, and aspiring artists had the chance to take pottery-throwing lessons with instructors and students from the Bemis School of Art in Colorado Springs.

Spectators who opted to keep their hands dry and their clothing clay-free had a view to some of the best-known potters in the region. Wong, for example, has work featured in galleries across Colorado.

Lance Timco, the head of the ceramics department at Pikes Peak Community College, captured a first-place finish in a five-minute race. He shaped 5 pounds of clay into a smooth, concave bowl with 20 seconds to spare.

Timco folded his creation back into a lump after the judging was done, sparking objections from the crowd.

The Clayfest is held with support from the Southern Colorado Ceramic Supply in Manitou Springs and Mile Hi Ceramics in Denver. Every year, one of them donates about 3,000 pounds of clay, and the other makes a series of $100 gift certificates available for a raffle.

There are no cash prizes for winners. The organizers say they want the emphasis to be on fun and collaboration, not competition.

That easygoing spirit could be felt in the festival's finale, the hands-free pottery-throwing contest. The crowd shouted and whistled as potters used their elbows, forearms and feet to shape clay.

The biggest acclaim was reserved for Angela Huffstutter, of Pueblo, who thrust her entire head into her bowl and used her tongue as the DJ cued up Rick James' "Superfreak."

She earned the top-finish, and walked away savoring her victory.

"I got a lot of clay stuck behind my teeth. It basically tastes like dirt," she said.

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