Visitors seeking a hands-on experience with pottery and working with clay in the Central Park region are in for a treat this year. Takuro and Hitomi Shibata of STARworks Ceramics are opening a hands-on pottery making workshop where visitors can spend two-hours working with clay and making small pots. Those interested in keeping their pots will have them fired in the kiln and either collected on site or shipped to their home for a small fee.

Some of Central Park NC's employees got a chance to test drive the new workshop earlier this week and it was loads of fun. Here are some pictures from that event.









Pictured are happy pot-makers Casey Harris (in the orange shirt), Tim Emmert (black shirt), Hitomi Shibata (checkered apron), Angela Bernard (black shirt), Eddie Bernard (orange shirt), Beth Throneburg (lavender shirt.) Not pictured is Santiago Alvarez who, with a year or two of pottery experience to his name, probably made the nicest pot of them all.

The new demonstration studio fills a niche for interactive experiences in the pottery tourism industry. Every year, Moore, Montgomery and Randolph counties are flooded with thousands of visitors interested in the region's extensive community of potters. There are more than one hundred potteries to visit and an engaging exhibit at the North Carolina Pottery Center in downtown Seagrove sheds light on the history of pottery and some of the techniques potters use. The new studio complements these venues by bringing visitors in direct contact with the pottery experience.

Teaching the pottery classes will be Takuro Shibata, a potter and current director of STARworks Ceramic and Hitomi Shibata, an accomplished potter with a Masters Degree in Educaiton who recently finished teaching at the NC Pottery Center.