AJ Takes the Wheel at Grantville’s Mud Haven Pottery Studio
Written by ROBIN STEWART
AJ Sears never imagined life as a potter, but it's a life she loves.
Amy Jo Sears-Moore, better known as AJ, never imagined ending up in Grantville as owner and instructor at Mud Haven Pottery Studio. Hers is a unique journey that took her all over the globe before ultimately calling Coweta home.
Mud Haven moved down the street and around the corner from its previous downtown location about a year ago. The studio new resides in a fun and funky, renovated, 1930s-era, former gas station at 55 Griffin Street in Grantville. Blessed with big windows, lots of natural light and large roll-up doors allowing fresh air and an outdoor feel, the space is ideal for its current purpose.
For about 15 years, Sears-Moore worked as a stuntwoman traveling the world and performing live stunt shows. She also worked in television and film in California and Singapore, where she and her husband Patrick lived for seven years. His career change brought them back stateside to California and, a couple years later, her husband’s desire to return to the stunt business brought them to Georgia where close friends in what they call their “stunt family” already lived.
AJ dabbled in art and pottery in high school, but it would be years before she fully returned to it. An unfortunate knee injury during one of her shows abroad required ACL surgery, which led to “the second time I got into pottery,” recalls the self-taught potter who, while undergoing physical therapy as part of her recovery, found pottery to be "a form of mental or art therapy."
A few years ago, while her husband was working out of town on a film for several months, AJ found herself with free time and once again felt the call of the clay. She discovered Wren’s Nest Pottery in Hogansville and quickly became an active member.
“I was there basically four days a week, eight hours a day,” she says. “It was fun. It was art therapy. You’re going to get good at something doing it that much.”
Having fallen in love with it, AJ had her own wheel and kiln soon after and established her home studio. After Covid struck, the owner of Wren’s Nest asked Sears-Moore to take over teaching classes there. She happily accepted and learned the business of running a studio.
The story of how Mud Haven Pottery Studio came to be is rather serendipitous. While working at the Hogansville studio, AJ visited The Hug Box, a boutique in downtown Newnan that sold her wares. It was there she met Doug Frost who happened to be the store’s landlord.
“He’s why Grantville is coming back to life,” AJ says.
During a long conversation, Frost explained that he'd bought a city block in Grantville, according to AJ, who says he invited her to open a pottery studio there. She declined, saying it wouldn’t seem right because she was teaching just 10 minutes away at Wren’s Nest.
The next day, the owner of Wren’s Nest told AJ that she was thinking of closing her studio and encouraged the budding artist to open her own pottery studio.
“And that’s how Mud Haven started,” says AJ.
In business four years now, the potter credits hubby Patrick with helping make things happen. He assists regularly with studio tasks and maintenance, and has become a potter himself.
Shortly after opening Mud Haven Potter, AJ had a video go viral on TikTok. She had filmed herself throwing a bowl in 60 seconds – while blindfolded. It got 4.7 million views. She recently recreated the video, wearing a proper mask since the Internet doubted her blindfold in the original reel. Plus, she added one more twist.
“I beat my record," she reveals. "I did it in just under 50 seconds, but I also said the alphabet backwards while doing it.”
Past will meet the present in future videos when AJ Sears-Moore brings her stunt experience to pottery. She has plans to film a video of herself throwing a pot while hanging upside down in moon boots. Perhaps her boldest plan on the horizon is one to film herself “doing a fire burn while throwing a pot,” she says.
Fire burn is stunt-speak for setting oneself ablaze. The stunt actor says she’s done 600 or more during her career and considers it rather routine.
Mud Haven Pottery Studio offers a variety of classes and workshops. The intro class is a one-time workshop for those eager to play in the mud while AJ teaches basic techniques of throwing on a potter’s wheel. Armed with three balls of clay, most students leave having made three pots. The Studio puts the finishing touches on the bowls, adding the student’s colors of choice. The experience creates not just pottery – but artists as well.
“If you make a pot, you’re a potter,” says AJ.
Her mostly local students range from age 4 to 85. Many take ongoing wheel classes, while others take six to eight consecutive classes required to take their skill up to the next level.
Mud Haven Pottery Studio is a co-op. Upon successfully completing eight classes and learning important studio safety and operational protocols, students can become members with flexibility to work on art at the studio several times a week. Open studio hours are 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday.
Mud Haven Studio is open and available to members who try pottery and find they want to return to the wheel again and again.
For her students, AJ offers a demonstration and basic instruction but also seeks to find what works for them.
“There’s no right or wrong to this,” she says. “It just takes time on the wheel to learn the centering. It takes strength, but it also takes finesse. You’re learning how to dance with the clay.”
AJ describes herself as a hands-on teacher who works one-on-one with students.
"I wear knee pads and sit on the floor beside them, helping them figure out how to move the clay," she says.
Just as students are different, all clay is not the same either, she notes.
“There are different types of clay bodies,” says AJ. “Some have magnesium in it to give speckles. Some have grit and grog to make it a little bit more firm. Each clay has its own personality.”
Students use only the clay provided, necessary with the electric kilns the studio uses. Outside clays are not allowed since clay and glazes fired at the wrong temperature can result in melted puddles and costly damage.
“It’s all chemistry,” says the potter, noting as an example that an antique white glaze appears pink before it’s fired, but after being subjected to 2,232 degrees, the result is indeed antique white.
Coffee mugs are the most popular choice for novice potters to create, according to the art instructor.
“They want to make their own coffee mug, and it’s actually pretty challenging,” she says, adding that it’s a matter of fighting the centrifugal force of the wheel. Plus, an eight-ounce mug measures about five inches tall and three inches wide, and clay shrinks, according to AJ.
“It shrinks during the first fire, and it shrinks during the final fire,” she says, noting that finished products come out of the kiln about 12% smaller than when they were put in.
"Every first potter’s mug ends up the size of a teacup," says AJ.
The potter cautions her students that, since so many things can, and often do, go wrong during the firing process, it's a good idea to "not fall in love" with a piece until it's safe at home.
Pottery is not for those seeking instant gratification, says AJ; instead, it’s a process.
"Young potters learn the investment of time in each step of their creation," she says. "Experience is not necessary; patience is."
When not busy running Mud Haven Pottery, AJ works on her own creations. She sells her work online at Etsy.com and at local events including the Hummingbird Festival in Hogansville and the market at RPM in downtown Newnan, among others.
A stunt actor who's overcome fears aplenty, AJ takes the fear of the fragile out of pottery, too. She encourages touching and holding the pieces. At Halloween, she offered a whimsical collection of emotional support ghosts designed to be held in the palm of your hand. There’s even a sign on her display that reads: “If you break it, don’t worry. I’ll make another one.”
The artist says she's seen too many people hesitant to grab or touch handmade pottery, but when you're considering buying a piece, being tactile is essential.
"If you’re buying a mug, you want to feel it in your hand, the weight of it, see what it feels like," she says.
AJ believes pottery is an art all can take part in.
“Pottery is great for anybody and everybody,” she says. "Adults forget that we need to feel like kids. We need art therapy. We grow up, and we work, and pay bills. We forget we need to take a moment and go do some art, whatever that is, whether music or pottery or something else. And anybody can make pottery, I promise you. It’s just mud.” NCM
