From Exile to Educator: Warwick Pottery Studio's Marilyn Dale
Marilyn Dale, founder of Warwick Pottery Studio, has attracted a following with her way of working.
Being kicked out of a pottery studio was Marilyn Dale’s first irresistible experience with a pottery wheel.
“I couldn’t control it,” Dale recalled. “The teacher said, ‘Don’t ever take a pottery class. Don’t even try it. You have no talent.’ I was aghast. I was always adept.”
This happened about 50 years ago in the 1970’s at Hofstra University, where Dale was a fine arts major studying painting and drawing, and art was her realm. Dale had that once accompanied her roommate to a pottery classroom.
So how did Dale arrive at running her own popular Warwick Pottery Studio, with much to show and many visitors at the December 10 annual show?
“Many years later, in New Jersey, a neighbor told me about a pottery program for the underprivileged. It took a year of sitting there for me to be able to center the clay on the pottery wheel,” said Dale. “Then a Brooklyn teacher honed my skills.”
What compelled her to persist, she said, were two dimensions of pottery—the practical and the spiritual.
“Once you know how how to do it, you can make something useful, an incense burner or a mug, but they’re breakable,” she said. “A painting may hang on a wall for 40 years. The financial advantage to breakability is that it helps with making money.”
As for the spiritual dimension, Dale said, “Potting connects to the self in a spiritual, physical manner, incorporating earth, fire and water. It touches me profoundly. I don’t lose the wonder for magic and alchemy. I love it as much as I ever loved it.”
She also noted the anthropological aspects of the craft, the differences in materials and culture in various places, with different kinds of soil.
However, only in the last five years has Dale been involved with pottery full time, beginning after she moved to Warwick, drawn by her enchantment with Greenwood Lake.
Previously her work varied. She was coordinator for low vision services for what is now Helen Keller Services for the Blind in New Jersey. She was principal of a Hebrew School in Monroe, New York. She taught pottery at a church in Demarest, New Jersey.
“I could kick myself,” said Dale, of her delay in devoting herself to pottery.
As for teaching, her philosophy stems from her experience with having to find her own way with the wheel.
“I nurture each student at the wheel, doing pottery the way they do it,” she said.
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