World-renowned potter as TCMU Artist in Residence

Senora Lynch learned how to make bead work, leather work and tribal clothing for pow wows as a young girl, however it was in pottery that she found her calling. She would sit with the grandmothers of the Haliwi-Saponi Indian Tribe while they worked, and by the age of 14 was assisting her Tribe’s elders with pottery classes.

It was twenty years later that pottery returned to the forefront of her life, creating her trademark style of hand-carved pottery after studying hand coiling with a tribal potter. After pounding red clay and rolling it into long ropes, she stacks and smooths the clay to form the desired vessel shape. The piece will be polished with a rock to make it smooth and shiny before etching in designs and finally firing it in a kiln.

Lauris creating a clay turtle at TCMU's art class

Lynch’s work has been exhibited at the NC Museum of History, the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Women Museum of the Arts, and she’s the youngest ever to receive the NC Folk Heritage Award for her work in promoting and preserving the culture of the Haliwa-Saponi people. You’ll find her ceramics on permanent display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC.

We are honored to have this world-renowned artist in Greenville as the Artist in Residence at the Children’s Musuem of the Upstate this week! Ms. Lynch will be instructing classes during the Amazing Art Summer Camp until Friday, creating clay beads, turtles, bowls and corn maidens. Even if your children aren’t registered for summer camp, you still have a chance to join her afternoon art program today at 2:30. In addition to teaching the children about Native American art and pottery techniques, they will together create clay turtles.