How Hooray for Clay Started!
Hooray for Clay, Inc., is an 18-year culmination of teaching and art making by the owner and founder, Katy McDougal.
Katy grew up in Louisiana and never had any art classes but loved to draw vases with flowers. Her love of drawing vases came from seeing a broken potter’s wheel out on her aunt’s porch. Every time she would visit her, she'd always wondered how it would feel to make a pot. So on a whim, in fall of 1992, she signed up for her first ceramics class and it was magic. By 1996, she had received her BFA with a concentration in ceramics from the Appalachian Center for Crafts, in Smithville, TN.
After moving to Atlanta in 1998, she began teaching children art in private schools and adults and kids at community art centers. Sharing her love for art and clay with kids became a huge part of her professional life. But while working in the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center as a Pottery Assistant, making pots full time became her dream.
In 1996, she married Wayne Pelletier and a year later she had a daughter, Violet Pelletier. She quit her job of 8 years teaching middle school art in an Atlanta private school to take care of Violet and start to fulfill the full time potter dream.
While trying to balance her work in the studio and taking care of an infant, (quickly turning into a toddler!) she realized that her dream had shifted into wanting a place where she and her daughter could play in the mud with friends. Making pottery was great but just not as fun as being with her daughter. Katy started inviting friends over who also had toddlers and small children and host “clay play dates,” and started being asked to offer clay birthday parties. While offering a Mommy & Me clay class at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Hooray For Clay, Inc., became a new dream.
Hooray for Clay’s location is considered a historic building in Decatur. 402 E. Howard started out as a Feed and Seed store, approximately 150 years ago. Throughout the years, it has been a Cabbage Patch Adoption Center, Spencer Tire (PDF: see pg 15) and Sales Company, Depeaux restaurant parking, and now Hooray for Clay: Party and Play Center.
Katy’s hope for each Hooray For Clay patron is to help you spend more quality time with your friends and family, in a relaxed, fun, and welcoming atmosphere!
Instructors:
Gwen Fryar:
Local studio potter and native of Atlanta, Gwen is a Lake Claire resident. With a BFA from UGA and a twenty plus year career in graphic design, Gwen made the transition into ceramics in the late nineties. Her combination of form, function, and illustrative techniques make her work truly distinctive. Gwen began her pursuit of clay as an assistant at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. She now works as a full time studio potter in her Lake Claire studio. She has been teaching clay as well as a variety of art mediums to young artists for over ten years in the Atlanta area. Her resume of exhibitions and invitational shows through out the region is vast. In 2010, her work will once again join the ranks of Georgia's 50 top potters in the prestigious Perspectives, an annual invitational in Watkinsville, Georgia.
Katy McDougal:
Katy has been making ceramic art since 1992 and working as a studio potter since 2003. Since moving to Atlanta in 1998, she has been teaching elementary and middle school students in local private schools and community art centers. Her summers have been filled with teaching pottery at Callanwolde Fine Art Center’s summer camp program for the past 6 years. She currently teaches adult handbuilding classes at Callanwolde on Thursday evenings.
Aalia Mujtaba:
Jeweler and art instructor
Call to inquire about parties, classes,
open studio and more!