Intro to the Artist

To my readers,

My name is Mallory and this is my art blog. Here you will be able to read about my creative process, my struggles and hopefully my successes as I strive to become the artist everyone thinks I already am.
A little bit about me: I have made jewelry since I was 10 years old and always dreamt of opening my own jewelry gallery and workshop, so I went to Mars Hill College to get a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. I graduated with that very degree in May of 2008 and left school with the same dream, a business plan and too much fear to go through with it all. So I fell back on plan B and put my second concentration to use: Accounting.
I am currently a staff accountant with Gould Killian, CPA Group,a small public firm in Asheville, NC. I love my work, but it is not where my heart is and I have not given up on my original plan...I have simply modified it. I have now decided to work in accounting for the next five years, putting every extra penny I can find in savings which will be put into my gallery at the end of my accounting career. So for now I work full time and spend every free moment I have on my art.
I got more out of college than a degree and a business plan though, I also found a new love...I discovered pottery. My last semester of my senior year I was finally able to fit Pottery I into my schedule, a task I had attempted every semester since my freshman year. My teacher and mentor, Jane, warned me that after taking the class I would struggle to chose which I loved more, pottery or jewelry; a struggle which she herself had dealt with. Jane was right, but rather than choose between the two I have kept creating in both mediums.
My parents, who are the most loving and supportive parents I could ever hope for, bought me a pottery wheel for my 22nd birthday and now I find myself covered in pottery clay nearly every night of the week. I have the perfect set up with the wheel in the basement of the amazing house I am currently renting (see my other blog for details about the house and my housemates), and my jewelry desk set up on my home-office.

My pottery studio, complete with my faithful audience - my cat Samantha

I currently sell have my jewelry in galleries from Asheville to Waynesville as well as online and soon hope to have my pottery in several galleries and on my website as well. The pottery is more slow-going because I do not own my own kiln and have to transport my work back and forth from my house in Asheville to Waynesville, where I use a friend's kiln and glazes.
My art, like this blog, is in it's beginning stages and I hope that as my reader you will join me in my journey as an artist and enjoy it as much as I know I will! My basement pottery workspace

My jewelry workspace in my home-office