Pass Christian Master Potter Brian Nettles helps mold a young artist's business future

Talent is vital for any successful artist, but knowing and understanding business basics is just as important to keep the success going. This year, Pass Christian master potter Brian Nettles got to pass along his acquired wisdom to a young potter who was his apprentice.

Joe Geil, an Oregon native who studied at Montana State University, became an apprentice to Nettles through a Folk Art grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission. He was Nettles' first apprentice.

"I picked Joe," Nettles said at his studio next to his home. "When I met him, he had just finished."

Geil was making pots, but he wanted to learn more. So Nettles invited him to "come down, and I asked him what he was interested in, in marketing and business.

"His experience in school was that he didn't get much in those areas. I have a doctor friend who has said the same about medical school. How do you set up your business? Accounting? All those aspects of making a living," Nettles said.

Geil also was interested in the construction side of a pottery.

"He didn't know much about kiln building," Nettles said. "I had built about 50 kilns, for myself and for other people, so I had some experience in that area."

They built a wood-fired salt kiln between the display studio and the much-larger teaching studio, where Nettles holds workshops and classes and rents out space. It was an appropriate choice for Geil, whose works feature a salt glaze. In the salt-firing process, salt is added to the kiln firebox. At a high temperature, the salt vaporizes, and this vapor mixes with silica in the clay, making a hard glaze and add

ing unique markings and designs to each piece.

"The thing about a salt kiln is, you never know how it (the patterns on the pottery pieces) will come out," Nettles said.

The Mississippi Arts Commission's Folk Art Apprenticeship focuses on traditional art forms found throughout the state. Artist descriptions for previous apprenticeships include boat builders, quilters, old-time fiddlers, traditional potters, basketmakers, and blues guitarists, according to the Arts Commission's website.

"The Folk Art Apprenticeship program helps to assure the sustainability, development, and continued evolution of community-based traditional art forms found throughout Mississippi," Jennifer Jameson, the Arts Commission's Folk and Traditional Arts Program director, has said.

"The program allows master traditional artists to pass along their unique skills to promising novice artists that work in their art form. The master artist works with the apprentice on a one-on-one basis over an agreed upon period of time to teach specific aspects of the tradition. The program is focused on supporting forms of creative expression that have been an important part of community life for many years and that are passed on informally rather than being taught through formal instruction."

Geil is now in Virginia, at Cub Creek Foundation: A Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. There's he's involved in building a wood-fired salt kiln.

"That's one of the reasons they hired him," Nettles said. "He knew how to build one."

This story was originally published December 12, 2015 at 7:27 PM with the headline "Pass Christian Master Potter Brian Nettles helps mold a young artist's business future ."