DebLynne Pottery & Soaps

Debbie Van Cleave

Who was DebLynne?

Deborah Lynne Van Cleave died of cancer in June, 2001, at age 28. The text below was written by Debbie about 1997. For more on Debbie, see Sam Venable's book, Mountain Hands: A Portrait of Southern Appalachia, 2000, University of Tennessee Press, pictured at the bottom of this page. In 2003, Debbie's work was included, along with the other people in the book, in the East Tennessee Historical Society's exhibit, titled Mountain Hands.

"Being blind since birth I have always had an affinity for tactile art forms, especially ones involving physical molding such as hand built clay sculpture and later wheel thrown pottery. At age three I first discovered the joys of play dough, molding it into unrecognizable forms I said were animals, boats, etc.; and making the inevitable play dough mess for my mother to clean up. I now have a (nine year old) daughter who makes the same unidentifiable sculptures and great messes, but also makes lovely pinch pots. The main difference is that she is sighted and uses my scrap clay instead of play dough. The clay is more fun for her because she can then paint and fire her creations. At about age five or six my mother bought me my first real bag of clay, from which came the inevitable pinch pots, etc. which were then fired in my grandmother's kiln. Some of my Christmas ornaments from that era still hang on our tree.

My true talents for clay art manifested themselves in high school art classes where I had an art teacher who was afraid to let the Blind Student work with sharp objects. Therefore I was mostly confined to clay sculpture. That is when I first began considering pottery as a career. After high school I bought a kiln and began making and selling hand built pieces. Soon after, I began working in the pottery shop of a family friend (Buie Pottery in Gatlinburg, where my work is available). There I gained much valuable knowledge about pottery and got my first experience with the potter's wheel. Buie is the one I give credit to for giving me the encouragement I needed to take pottery classes at both the University of Tennessee and Pellissippi State Community College. This led me to go into business for myself.

Since then Buie has given me much technical and moral support which has helped me immeasurably with the trials and tribulations of starting a pottery business. I have been building DebLynne Pottery for about six years now, and I have displayed my wares at several juried shows, including the Museum of Appalachia Homecoming show, the Dogwood Arts Festival in Knoxville, the Mountain Makins Festival in Morristown, Tennessee, the Lenoir City Arts and Crafts Festival, the Greeneville Iris Festival, and the Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-In in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (where I display and sell pottery with aircraft images). The thing that makes my pottery different from others' is that I imprint my pottery with a wide variety of tactile images. These images are hand painted by my helpers (notably my mother) before the pieces are glazed and fired to the middle of the high fire range. From this process comes the slogan on my business card, "Fusing the tactile and visual arts..."

To see a list of shows we attend and have attended, click on Where to find us.

To see some pictures from several of these shows, look here.

© 2004 by Deblynne Pottery & Soaps