Twin Cities Tour Of The Arts: Northern Clay Center

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- All week long, WCCO This Morning is taking a tour of the arts scene in the Twin Cities. On Monday, we feature Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, which has two exhibits on display this month.

The exhibits include:

• "Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality and Queerness in Contemporary Ceramics" -- on display until the last week in April.

• "Eat, Drink and… : Minnesota Women Ceramic Artists Exhibition"

Have you ever thrown a pot? Northern Clay center in Minneapolis has workshops for all ages.

Autumn Higgins is new to Minnesota. After completing her graduate work at Louisiana State University, she moved here to expand her studies of ceramics for the Fogelberg Studio Fellowship at Northern Clay Center.

"Most of them will have unglazed and some glazed areas," Higgins said after she showed WCCO's Ali Lucia some of her complete pieces. "This one has a stop sign and you can kind of see a top of a house. And then I sometimes wrap the images around the bottom."

Higgins has certainly taken a liking to the Twin Cities. She spends her days sketching all sorts of images so she can properly place them on her hand made creations.

Her porcelain pots are painted with bikes, buildings and eye catching architecture that can be seen all across the metro.

"The porcelain gives me a nice white background to do the drawings on," Higgins said.

The drawings take Higgins anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour for her to complete. She said her inspiration came from her grandmother, but the fellow didn't start throwing until college.

"So if you're coming in with a lot of energy and you're jumpy, your pots are going to be jumpy. And if you're coming tired, your pots are going to be a bit slower moving." Northern Clay's Head of Education, Dustin Yager, said.

Whether you're artist or a beginner, it's certainly worth stepping on the wheel.

"Every pot or sculpture tells a different story, so you get to know your neighbors in a different way," Yager said.