THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511220289
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
He forms the wet clay that spins before him, and the fast pace of the '90s recedes.
Birds zip by the window. In warm weather, he can lift the sash and hear them chirp. A shell garden lies in a small patch of sand across the way. He watches the birds during pauses from working the clay.
This is Shawn Morton's Dunehouse Pottery studio, his Zen garden atop a hill in Kitty Hawk.
Morton is quiet while he works on the potter's wheel. He concentrates while carefully cutting a foot into a bowl - one of his trademarks. Many potters leave flat bottoms on their pots, but Morton likes the way the foot elevates the work.
``It takes almost as long to lathe the foot as to pull the sides up,'' he said.
A self-taught potter, Morton got his first taste of clay in a high school art class.
While his classmates were working on silk screening, Morton found an old potter's wheel in the back of the class. And before long, it was spinning.
``I've never been trained,'' he said. ``I just learned to do it. It's the feel. It's the touch.''
Upon graduating from college with a history degree and French minor, Morton worked several jobs before becoming a newspaper ad sales representative.
A driven, personable chap, Morton was very successful, but the rush-hour lifestyle got old.
``I just really got burnt out with sales,'' he said. ``I really got exhausted.''
It's unusual for a competitive sales guy to gravitate toward art, but art had taken root long before Morton came to sales. His mother, Lydi, is an artist who always encouraged Morton to create.
She saved a drawing of a frog that she asked her son to draw when he was 3 years old. The framed image looks just like a frog, and it's a solid shape rather than a linear outline or scribble typical of that age.
The early work shows dedication, a characteristic that Morton has demonstrated fervently.
That precious frog that Lydi saved foreshadowed Morton's affinity for three dimensions.
``Shapes really turn me on,'' Morton said.
He is very fond of the honey pots he creates much like the round, warm shapes from the world of Winnie the Pooh. He makes large, lidded ones and smaller jars.
But Morton is not into mass production. He'll scan his pottery-lined shelf and say, ``Too many honey pots,'' and turn his attention to creating a bowl with a subtle lip and gently swelling sides.
His pots are formed from earthenware, and he shies away from creating just functional ones.
``Shawn, you're not doing utilitarian stuff,'' Morton says his mother told him. ``You're more an artist than a crafter.''
The 30-year-old is enjoying the new pace that clay demands. Lydi does a lot of the glazing at Dunehouse, and already Morton has been accepted to show his work in the Ghent Art Show in Norfolk.
He's done demonstrations at Morales Art in Duck and was scheduled to perform his craft at the two-day Thanksgiving art extravaganza at the former George Crocker Car Museum/Treasure Gallery in Nags Head, Nov. 24-25.
The high-pressure sale days have evolved into a sensuous art experience for Morton.
``When I throw pottery, it's one of the few things I can concentrate on for a very long time,'' he said. ``Now I found something that really captivates me.'' MEMO: Shawn Morton's work is available at the Morales gallery in Nags Head.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY ELLEN RIDDLE
Potter Shawn Morton, working in his studio at Dunehouse Pottery in
Kitty Hawk, got his first taste of clay in a high school art class.
by CNB