A local artist is celebrating 50 years of pottery, paintings and teaching. Larry Manning is being commemorated with an exhibit titled, “Turning Fifty: Paint, Pottery, and Purpose” at Artel Gallery, 223 Palafox Place.
“Larry has been around forever,” said Artel Gallery President Randy New. “He’s taught pottery for many years, so he’s created a generation of new potters.”
Manning just turned 80 and continues to churn out new works at Magic Kiln Pottery, his ceramic oasis in Pace where he lives with his wife, Diane. The studio is a model of its kind, with a sprawling library of functional works that potters tend to accumulate without much thought.
“It’s like a big barn,” said New, who’s visited the studio many times. “It’s hard not to walk out of there without a box full of pots. His work is primarily functional and not sculpture but he treats every piece with the dignity of a sculptor.”
Manning’s exhibit is a core sample of his work ethic, a spread of 180 ceramic objects fired in the past year surrounded by recent paintings. Some of the pottery is half price to reflect the prices of the 1970’s when his career was taking off. The paintings are oils of dense cityscapes, cluttered cafes, and table settings.
“I didn’t want to do just pottery,” Manning said. “(It’s) because I love painting also.”
When asked which medium he loves more, Manning remains neutral.
“You sell more pottery of course because it’s a smaller purchase,” he said. “But lately I’ve been painting, getting ready for this show. In the last three months I’ve done 30 of them.”
His preparation for the show, which opened on June 16, carried him through the quarantine phase of the Coronavirus pandemic and still helps him to “get away from the TV.” This commitment has enabled him to replace the paintings that have sold during the show- some of them during its opening day- with new ones.
Technically, Manning’s exhibit is a misnomer. He estimates that he started making art in elementary school.
“Before I could write I could draw,” he said.
Manning was born in Kentucky and moved around as his father worked for the chemical giant, DuPont. In school, Manning didn’t receive any formal art instruction.
“I had teachers that allowed me to do art and create in the classroom,” he recalled.
A validation of his abilities came during the sixth grade in South Carolina, when he won a $50 prize in a drawing contest. A year later, the Mannings made their way to Pensacola when his father took a position at the new Chemstrand Plant, which opened up in the 1950’s. His father liked the fishing so much that they made it their final home. At A.V. Clubbs Junior High School, Manning had an art teacher who recognized his talent and helped him develop it. After high school he went to PJC to study drawing under Carl Duke. This led to a degree in painting at FSU and eventually to art education, a program that funneled its graduates to teach at community colleges. With this new accreditation, he returned home to teach at Workman Middle School whose curriculum included ceramics. The school’s method emphasized templates and patterns which Manning found very restrictive. His remedy was to return to PJC for night classes taught by Bill Clover, the department’s revered potter who encouraged his students to find their own style through his looser attitude towards modeling clay.
“His approach to it was totally different,” Manning said. “I just fell in love with ceramics.”
While Manning was blazing an art education path, he still yearned to be a working artist. He taught at UWF for four years, cranking out sculpture from its ceramic studio.
“My friends were going to shows and coming back with pockets full of money,” he recalled. “They said they were making mugs, and bowls, and platters, and so on. So, I started making some of them too.”
He fortified his craft with an MFA in ceramics at Ole Miss and spent a year teaching art in surrounding rural communities and at Mississippi Delta College. In 1973, a position opened up at Jefferson Davis Community College in Brewton, Ala.
“When I first started there, I did all the crafts,” Manning said. “I taught everything except photography.”
During his tenure, he also studied for a year in Cortona, Italy, and Penland School of Crafts in Spruce Pine, NC. He continued to hone his pottery and painting duet, gaining public praise from exhibiting at art festivals like the Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival and Williams Station Day in Atmore, Ala. In 1985, he founded the Alabama Clay Conference, an annual weekend gathering of lectures and workshops that attracts craftsman ranging from storefront ceramic artists to the dying breed of folk potters. Its 35th edition was held last February in Orange Beach.
Manning retired from Jefferson Davis in 2000. He came back home and wound his way to Pensacola State College to foster the next wave of budding potters with an approach that seemed familiar.
“The funny thing about Larry is his teaching technique,” said Ryan Thomas, a former student. “He throws very loose. But the stuff he sells; they’re very well made.”
Those finer crafts are all laid out at “Turning Fifty: Paint, Pottery, Purpose.” Manning doesn’t exhibit as much as he used to, owing to the grind and logistics of exhibitions. But he continues to keep shop at Magic Kiln Pottery, celebrating a lifetime of art every single day.
“Turning Fifty: Paint, Pottery, Purpose”
Artel Gallery, 223 Palafox Place
On view through July 23
Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday
Visit artelgallery.org
Free admission
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Pace potter churning out new works at his ceramic oasis