Meet our Team!
Cary Dahl
Founder & Director
Cary comes from a long line of oil painters, and indeed, portrait painting was Cary’s first love. After a handbuilding class with Janly Jaggard and Jim Hanger, however, Cary became drawn to pottery for its tactile qualities and the camaraderie of the community studio. Phil Unger and Liz Beaver at Blue Ridge Community College became her teachers over the next several years, fostering her fascination with texture and form.
Years of service at church and on nonprofit boards, both local and international (including The Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge, Stuart Hall School, and EVACE International) have focused Cary’s attention on Staunton as a community. She believes that the joy of creating together is a great way to foster closer connections among our residents, both new and old.
When her hands are not covered in clay, Cary loves hiking, biking, reading, traveling and learning French. She has a wonderful husband, Allen, and three children who never cease to amaze and surprise her; Hannah teaches English as a Second Language at VCU, Oliver remodels and repurposes historic buildings in Staunton, and Sophie is a budding anthropologist focusing on post-Soviet cultures.
Abby Kiracofe
Instructor & Studio Tech Extraordinaire
Abby has had an interest in art ever since she was a kid. She was always excited to explore new mediums and find new ways to create. If she wasn’t creating, then she was reading, filling her brain with the imagination of new worlds and fantastical creatures. Her parents, both avid readers, nurtured this imagination and encouraged it to grow.
Abby had been briefly introduced to clay in elementary school, but would not take interest in it until her sophomore year of high school, when she took her first ceramics course. Throughout this course she discovered a love for hand building. This was her first introduction to the world of clay. When she entered college at the University of Mary Washington in 2020 as a 2024 graduate, she crammed every available clay class into her schedule as they came up. It was through these four years that Abby really developed her hand-building skills, since at the time she was unable to learn the wheel, due to the pandemic (she later learned the wheel at Staunton Clayground!). She learned how to make glazes, fire kilns, how kilns are built and the history of them. It was also during this time that Abby took a variety of other courses in other mediums, to make her well rounded as an artist. Her favorite medium other than clay is cardboard, where she creates sculptural pieces such as swords, maps, and dioramas, “A glimpse into another world, ” as she calls it. Abby believes that all art is good art as long as it was intended to be art.
When Abby is not making art, she can often be found reading books and writing stories in worlds that only she knows the full scope of.
Valya Boutenko
Instructor
Valya Boutenko first took up working with clay as a young child. By age 5, a pound of clay was the only item on her wish list for Santa. She pursued hand building into young adulthood and began learning to throw on the wheel at age 15. While attending University, Valya practiced many art forms including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, pastels, ink pen, fiber art, only to find that her secret heart was truly buried in world of ceramics. It appealed to her that functional pottery was artwork one couldn’t help but interact with daily. It was not just something to look at, but something to pick up and handle. To her, it seemed that handmade pottery enhanced the richness of life, bringing a sense of joie de vivre to ordinary daily mealtimes and special occasions alike.
All the while, Valya never neglected the art of handbuilding and routinely practiced sculpting hollow dragons and other sculptural forms to hone her craft. She believes that throwing and hand building are both challenging, equally valuable skills that greatly enhance one another. From the masterfully thrown mug crafted with extra finesse, to a coil-made vessel that demonstrates the full emotional potential of hand-built work, Valya believes in the importance of developing throwing and hand building skills side by side.
Valya is an avid gardener who enjoys growing fruit trees and English roses in her backyard. She also enjoys hand-knitting sweaters with natural fibers such as wool and alpaca. Having a deep appreciation for the natural world, Valya’s pottery often features organic, asymmetrical qualities. She believes that mastery in ceramics is being able to highlight the unparalleled beauty of clay’s inherent nature.
Mary Tuttle
Instructor
Mary Tuttle first encountered clay at Mary Washington College (now UMW) in 1982, and promptly fell in love. She took five semesters of studio ceramics and an independent study while graduating with the extremely useful bachelor's in Sociology.
Having been raised to believe that art was, at best, a diverting hobby, and at worst, an impediment to real work, pottery took a further 8 years to become a vocation.
Mary worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of the National Capitol Area, sold high-end furniture, and had a blast waitressing and bartending before being divinely inspired to take a pottery apprenticeship in 1993, and from there she hung out a shingle and began selling her work at shows and shops near Charlottesville and Staunton.
Her big break in clay arrived with a move to Gatlinburg, where she was able to open a shop, and fall helplessly in love with the University of Tennessee football program--go Vols!
In 2010, Mary moved back to Virginia to help her father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but instead of opening another shop, decided to sell through other shops in Staunton and teach pottery.
Mary hopes one day to have taught the entire world the joys of making pottery, but also realizes that might be a stretch.
Christy Pilson
Instructor
Christy Pilson started her journey with clay at JMU in the late 1980s, when she took her first clay class and was hooked. After graduating with a BFA in art with a concentration in ceramics, where she mostly created handbuilt pieces, she then worked for a year for Jim Hanger, a Staunton potter, where she learned much more about throwing on the wheel, faceting, pulling handles, and glazing. During this time, she also wedged clay, did most of the bisque firings, and tested glazes. She was greatly influenced by Mr. Hanger, potters Terry Porter and Karis Berry, and metalsmith Kyle Leister.
Through the years, Christy also taught a variety of Artist in Residence classes in various county schools, and attended a number of ceramics classes at BRCC under Phill Unger, and raku workshops with Lynn Hilton-Conyers. Deciding to go back to school, she earned an MAT from MBU in 2010, and has been teaching for Augusta County Public Schools on the elementary level since then. She has participated in several shows such as the ACPS teacher show at Bridgewater College and an annual ACPS teacher show that travels from school to school.
Christy currently teaches art at Wilson Elementary School, where every student does a ceramic project each year. She also teaches in JMU’s Kids Go to College Programs twice a year. She still loves handbuilding, as well as throwing and carving/altering the thrown forms. She lives in Augusta county with her family and cats, and is very excited to be a part of the Staunton Clayground.
Brooke Fawley
Instructor
“Seeing a mug being used every day by a loved one who lives far away during a Zoom call or a bowl that I made full of beautiful berries at a gathering for the community is such a wonderful feeling. I can be there for loved ones in some way.”
Creating functional pottery has been a wonderful experience for Brooke, but she also enjoys using clay sculpture in whimsical multimedia projects. She loves how messy, transformative and long the process of working with clay can be. Each piece has an extra-long relationship with its artist from start to finish. Like so many of the things in life we spend time with, the relationship and time creating a ceramic work of art creates opportunities for experiencing transformation, building friendships, healing, wonderful excitement, and is always a journey, from blob of clay to sparkling vessel.
“As far as hobbies go, I am very dedicated to teaching and looking forward to creating a mural at my school this summer. Traveling, gardening and good food all delight me.”
Anya Beldon
Tutor
Anya is a potter who currently works as a ceramic studio technician at Blue Ridge Community College. She has experience with wheel throwing, hand-building, and glaze chemistry, as well as a BFA from VCUArts in Craft and Material studies. Her current work focuses on color, pattern, and characters.
