Fall has arrived and we are excited that the Toccoa Harvest Festival is mere days away! We welcome our neighbors from North Carolina on Sunday as they arrive on the North Carolina Autumn Excursion via train to our beautiful community. The leaves are shining brightly and Toccoa Falls is glistening white, and we at Lifefire Pottery are scurrying like elves in preparation for the big day! If you enjoter at the wheel, you can’t miss a visit with us this weekend in downtown Toccoa. We’ll also be competing in the Currahee Artists Guild Fall Show held at The Studio & Frame Shop in downtown Toccoa. We have handthrown and handbuilt pottery beginning at a mere $10 price point. Lifefire also offers a variety – necklaces, decorative items, and cookware! Function meets form. Forget standing in long lines at a mall to purchase foreign-made JUNK this Holiday season! Enjoy your shopping and buy handmade, local, fully functional pottery from us at Lifefire Pottery! We will arrange for shipping if you are visiting us this weekend and do not wish to transport your goods. We also gladly accept custom orders. Can’t wait to see you this weekend!
Life has been quite busy at lifefire pottery during 2012 and we’re excited to add some new venues for our work. Jared received 3rd place in the recent Currahee Artists Guild Spring Show and was also featured in a regional exhibition at The Bascom, in Highlands, NC from January through March.
The Currahee Military Museum in downtown Toccoa is featuring a small body of work along with the latest craze – The exclusive Camp Currahee Mug commemorating the The 17,000 soldiers of the 501st, 506th, 511th, and 517th PID who trained at Camp Toccoa during World War II.
We are also excited to participate as a vendor in the Brenau BBQ Championship this weekend, May 25-26 in Gainesville, GA. Come Friday night from 6 – 9 p.m. for preview party or anytime Saturday. For more information:
We also plan to participate again in Art In The Square in Gainesville, GA September 15 & 16th.
Check out this video from last year’s fun: Wheel Throwing at Art In The Square
Our home show, The Toccoa Harvest Festival is scheduled for November 3rd & 4th in downtown Toccoa.
Our pottery classes have also expanded this year to include Tuesday and Wednesday classes. Tuesday afternoons are avaailable from 1:30 – 4:30 if you’d like to experience wheel-throwing first hand!
And finally, after all that, we hope to expand our studio and finish construction of our manabigama wood fired kiln by the end of this year! We have lofty goals here at Lifefire & we look forward to visiting with you throughout the rest of this year!
At Lifefire Pottery, Jared Kaup offers step-by-step instruction in the art of wheel-throwing. One-on-one instruction is the method. A student will throw on the wheel during the first half hour of the very first lesson As with any art, practice is the key to improvement and Jared attempts to cover the fundamentals as many times as neccessary to help his students achieve their next level of skill.
Lessons are $35 per 3 hour session, offered weekly. In just 3 weeks, a student can expect to experience the entire process of making a piece of pottery. Call today to schedule your first lesson! 770 539 4676
With Gainesville, Georgia’s Art In The Square 2011 fondly in our rear view mirror, Lifefire Pottery is now set to the task of preparing for our annual home show, the Toccoa Harvest Festival. This year’s festival is to be held October 29 and 30, alongside the Currahee Artists’ Guild Fall Show. We are excited to welcome our friends from North Carolina to our beautiful small town and we look forward to meeting you as you browse through the streets of Toccoa during your brief stay in our area. We ask that you kindly visit our booth – a one-stop-shop for all things pottery! If you are a collector or simply an avid user of hand-made, locally created, artisan work, we are certain you’ll find something that appeals to your taste!
Our booth will be located within close proximity to The Studio & Frame Shop, home of the Currahee Artists’ Guild and showplace of the Guild’s Fall Art Show and Sale. If you are interested in pottery but aren’t sure where to find us, make The Studio your first stop and ask for “Jared and Janet Kaup” or Lifefire Pottery and one of our dear friends will point you in our direction!
We will gladly wrap your items for easy transport on your train ride back to NC and will also arrange shipment back to your home if you’d prefer not to travel with your purchases.
Whether a train visitor, or one of the other 9,000 expected to stroll through these streets, we invite you to stop by and pay us a visit! Our pottery is priced from as low as an $8 spoon rest, so we’re certain we can find something that fits your style and your budget! The holidays are close at hand and we trust that you’ll consider Lifefire Pottery to meet your gift-shopping needs.
Should you be looking for special pottery items, colors, uses, etc., please contact us today and we’ll make some items for you to preview at the Harvest Festival. We look forward to meeting you or seeing you again soon as we showcase our beautiful little town!
We had an AMAZING time firing raku with lots of kids for Mothers Day in Gainesville. Even a few parents got in on the fun! Raku is a process that is great for kids! It’s abstract, surprising, and forces you to be open to starting over! Kids almost ALWAYS say, “It doesn’t look ANYTHING like I thought it would!,” but they are usually fascinated by how it DOES look! Several pieces were show-stopping gorgeous and we hope that the lucky moms and grands are proudly displaying their masterpieces! Stay tuned for Fathers Day opportunities!
What do funnel cakes, face paint, original oil & acrylic artwork, photography, pottery, moon bounce inflatables, and fried pies all have in common? Well, it’s fall, of course! And in towns both large and small, city dwellers come a’ creepin’ in from flatter locales to catch a feel for slower paces, cooler breezes, mountain vistas, some great food, and hopefully a handmade piece of pottery or two…
Saturday, November 6 from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday, November 7 noon – 4 p.m., lifefire will be celebrating the fall season at The Currahee Artists’ Guild 21st Annual Fall Arts & Crafts Festival in downtown Toccoa at The Studio & Frame Shop. We’ll be among 75 other artists participating in a judged show featuring over 200 pieces of artwork on display or for sale. We’ll also have a booth (somewhere in downtown) featuring our newest wares for sale.
Please stop by The Studio & head upstairs to check out our wares, and while you’re there, cast your vote for “Viewer’s Choice Award” … (lifefire pottery graciously accepts all votes!).
Typically, when we fire our raku kiln it has been for the community and the grand celebration that we orchestrate around the event, but earlier this month (honestly due to an electric kiln malfunction the day before a show!) we had the opportunity to experience what we’ve lovingly referred to as “Raku for 2.” It was a beautiful Friday – hotter than the devil’s armit for September, but beautiful nonetheless. We grabbed our coffee from the kitchen counter, grabbed an SD card for the zi8 and got to work glazing, waxing, loading, reducing, scrubbing, admiring, re-glazing (sometimes), re-firing (sometimes), and in short…doing the “raku thing” sans audience. At the end of the day we had a serious load of new wares to take to the next day’s show, many gigabytes of poorly shot video (you’re welcome!) and a dirty driveway. Ahhh…for the love of raku. It was a great day and we had a blast. After 11 years of marriage, this kind of day is one of the best “dates” you can have – full of laughing together, working together, high fives for good pots, wrinkled noses for bad pots, and an great feeling of being a team at the end of it all. That’s lifefire. We hope you’ll find this video educational, interesting, and just-inspiring-enough to make you want to join us for our next firing. Who knows, maybe it will spark some lifefire in you too…
Jared and Janet invite you to come and meet us, along with a wide variety of local artists later this month!
The Currahee Artists’ Guild will have their annual Meet the Artist show and sale on Friday, Feb. 27 from 6-8 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 28, from 10-5 p.m. in The Studio on Doyle Street in downtown Toccoa.
There will be live music and refreshments on Friday night and refreshments on Saturday. A variety of media wil be for sale on both days, and the participating artists will be available to meet you and discuss their work.
In addition to the show, the guild will have a miniature Show fundraiser with original artwork being donated by the guild members. Tickets can be purchased prior and during the show for $5 each or 6 for $25 and the drawing will be held on Saturday at 4 p.m. You do not have to be present to win.
For more information about the show, please cal 706.886.6138 or email kevintoc(at)windstream.net.
