Charlotte Pottery fires artwork and memories

Charlotte resident Brian DeWaters and his family have been enjoying relaxing, creative outings at paint-your-own-pottery studios for years. However, they noticed that the studios often fell short on space.

“The demand for space was pretty big,” DeWaters said. “A lot of places we went to were turning people away because they didn’t have enough seating.”

That led DeWaters, alongside his son, Dylan, and stepdaughter, Mikaela Hoyt, to start looking for a space big enough for their ideal studio — one where customers could drop in at any time to relax and just enjoy painting.

When they found a former car dealership in downtown Charlotte that could hold up to 200 people, they decided it was time. Charlotte Pottery opened in that space on June 12, with DeWaters and his son at the helm. Hoyt, the self-described “creative one out of the family,” is the studio manager.

“There are a lot of creative people in this town, but there aren’t a lot of spaces to accommodate their creative escapes,” Hoyt said.

Customers can purchase bisqueware — already-fired but unpainted pottery — off the shelves and paint it using food-safe glaze. The cost to buy, paint, fire and take home an item is fixed at 1.5 times the item’s shelf price, meaning customers can hang out as long as they’d like while they work on their keepsake at no additional cost.

There’s even a rack for works in progress, which some people work on for several days. DeWaters said some customers have begun coming in to chip away at a project for an hour or so every day, working the studio into their routine as they would a coffee run or morning walk.

“We get everyone,” Hoyt said. “We do get a lot of families and kids, but we’ll even have teenagers that come in on little date nights, and then adults as well.”

On the first and third Fridays of each month, the studio hosts an adult night. Customers can “go solo at it,” Hoyt said, or staff members such as herself can teach them different methods of glazing. For her, showing newcomers the ropes, then setting them free and seeing what they come up with, is particularly gratifying.

“They always think, ‘Oh, I’m not creative, I don’t know if I can do a good job,’ and it comes out a lot better than they think it will,” she said. “It’s cool to see people get in the zone and have a relaxing experience making something completely unique.”

She said some customers have used the studio to make keepsakes for events such as weddings and birthdays, which was her ultimate goal with the studio.

“Kids that are coming here now will grow up in this town and remember coming here as a child, and hopefully they’ll bring their own kids in the future,” she said. “That’s my end goal: to be a memory-making spot for the locals.”

As for out-of-towners, DeWaters said the studio aims to provide a needed family attraction in Charlotte.

“We want to bring people into town, not just for a restaurant or bar,” he said. “We want to bring them in and hold them here for a while, so they can just paint something, do something creative and spend time in Charlotte.”