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Mudworks Ceramics Factory lets people choose what they want to paint from hundreds of premade pieces.
By BETH N. GRAY
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 14, 2003
SPRING HILL -- At Mudworks Ceramic Factory, owner Karen Valiquette keeps the mud to herself while clients of the newly opened paint-your-own-pottery studio have most of the good, clean fun.
No mud is to be found in the studio of the spanking new building at 13802 Linden Drive, where customers choose prefired white bisque pieces -- from salt and pepper pairs to ornate plant pots and richly embossed dinnerware -- then select from some 80 paint colors, sit down to comfy dining-room furniture, choose brushes from a centerpiece vase and paint.
"This tends to be the trend in contemporary (ceramic) studios," said Valiquette, who began painting pottery as a fifth-grader with her mother in Vermont.
In a traditional shop, a client would begin with a piece of fragile greenware -- not the color green, but in the sense of green wood, she explained. The would-be artisan would gently file off seams left by the mold, sand the piece and hope it didn't collapse, wait for it to further harden, then prefire it in a high-temperature kiln. Finally, the artist could begin to paint and decorate.
"In contemporary studios, we take all that grunt work away," said Valiquette, who pours the liquid clay -- "in the industry, we call it mud" -- into the mold. She removes the semi-solid piece at critical dryness from its form and performs the filing, sanding and firing, producing a paint-ready bisque for the artist.
"People are so busy now, they don't have time to be involved in the whole process," the studio owner said. "The idea is to provide a relaxing spot, have conversation with friends, a cup of coffee, and paint."
Partying while painting was on the mind of Sarah Healy, whose parents, Dennis and Lisa Healy, arranged for Sarah to celebrate her 10th birthday with friends at the studio.
"You had a whole shelf (of bisque pieces) to pick from, and they had a lot of jewelry boxes and kid stuff," said Sarah, a fourth-grader at J.D. Floyd Elementary School. "It was really fun because I got to do a jewelry box with a butterfly on it."
Her guests painted figurines of elves, a dolphin, an elephant and teddy bears.
"I even did one -- a giraffe," said Sarah's father.
"We had 14 kids there, and they loved it," Healy said. "We'd had other parties, like at Chuck E. Cheese's, but this was great."
Valiquette intends to foster the party idea, whether for kids' birthdays or adult occasions. She provides the hands-on "entertainment" and appropriate decorations. She will even order the food.
Claire Trombley and a friend visited the studio more casually. Trombley, 90, chose a set of four dessert plates and asked her friend to paint them for her.
"No, no, no," Valiquette argued gently.
"I said I'd never held a paintbrush in my hand," Trombley said, "and she said, 'You're going to start now.' "
Trombley ultimately selected an angel motif, applied in the center of each plate with a rubber stamp, then painted on a border.
"I was quite thrilled," she acknowledged of the finished works, adding that she planned to return to Mudworks to pursue her new endeavor.
Valiquette does not assess an hourly fee, as do some studios.
"To keep looking at your watch would not be relaxing," she said. "You can sit here as long as you want."
Small bisque pieces such as animal figurines or wallet-size photo frames -- appropriate as starter pieces for kids -- are priced at $5 each, and might take a novice two hours to decorate. Large and intricate forms range up to $35 and might require more than one sitting. The price includes paints, glaze and firings, and any instruction or advice asked of Valiquette.
Valiquette even provides painter's aprons for the artists.
The shop offers a 20 percent discount to customers who purchase a bisque to take home and paint.
That suited Virginia Parrish of Brookridge just fine. She is part of a 45-member ceramic club that paints in the community center there. Parrish chose an 8-inch pasta plate, embossed with a grape cluster and wine bottle in its center and script around its border: pasta, lasagna, spaghetti and more.
With so much detail, she figured she would spend at least 12 hours with the plate.
Parish expressed pleasure at the opening of a ceramics studio only a few miles from her home. Spring Hill and Brooksville offer just two other shops selling bisque and greenware, she said. When Parrish began painting in the mid-1980s, about a half-dozen studios existed, she said.
That is one of the reasons that prompted Valiquette to open her studio.
Older owners had dropped out of the "very heavy, very labor-intensive" business, she said. Buckets of mud, or slip, weigh 60 pounds. Molds themselves weigh 10 pounds to 50 pounds.
Valiquette bought the inventory last year of Audrey Massey on Lake Lindsey Road, who retired after 40 years in the business. Valiquette rented Massey's workshop and began pouring under Massey's tutelage. She wholesaled her greenware, bisque and painted pieces to area gift shops and ceramic painting clubs.
Massey said Valiquette was a ceramic hobbyist when Massey, a certified adult education teacher, took her on.
"She adapted so well to ceramics," Massey said.
What Valiquette called "grunt work" isn't simple repetition learned in one lesson, Massey explained, noting that various molds are manipulated differently.
"It's sort of like raising a child. Just because you have three doesn't mean the fourth will be the same," she said.
Valiquette's husband, Stephen, encouraged her to open her own studio because their home at Pristine Place was overwhelmed with her works.
Karen Valiquette liked the idea of an endeavor that could involve her family. Her husband, the former owner of an advertising agency, serves as marketing manager. Their children -- Max, 17, Kaitlin, 15, and Sam, 9 -- tote and pour mud, and stack the studio's some 2,500 different molds. All of the children paint.
And it's a casual enough business that if one of the kids must stay home from school due to illness, Karen can reschedule studio hours.
Mudworks is open from noon to 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It is closed Sundays and Mondays. For information, call 684-4433.