Autumn Bunton was always drawn to creative pursuits, but it took awhile to find the right medium. "I had a great grandmother who did a lot of landscape oil painting, and she would give me her old canvases to play on, and so I did a lot of painting with oils all the way up through my young adult ages," says Bunton. "But I didn't find a craft that really fit me. And then I tried pottery and it was an instant, 'Oh, this is what I should be doing!'"
Fourteen years in, Bunton is a prolific, full-time potter, churning out a wide array of pieces that she sells locally at From Here and Pottery Place Plus, as well as on her Goblin Pottery Etsy site.
"I like functional and decorative pieces. I do a lot of different kinds of surface decoration," she says, noting she often throws something on the wheel and then alters it. "You can take it out of its form by either cutting into the piece or pushing and pulling on the piece, and then I sculpt on the exterior of that."
Recently, she's been creating functional pieces inspired by various animals — there's a frog salt cellar and a turtle butter dish. "They have a slightly midcentury feel — they're dipped in solid colors so they kind of match anybody's decor." She also creates whimsical mugs and more serious bowls of all sizes.
On the shelf in her studio are rows and rows of crocks designed for fermenting, and on another shelf, rows of light fixtures she crafts for the Light Factory in Spokane. The process, though repetitive, is still intriguing for Bunton, who also mixes all her own glazes. "I make the same thing in the same size and glaze the same way, and I do that same piece for many, many years, and they slowly just get a little better."
Bunton's a co-founder of the nonprofit Urban Art Co-op, which was formed to give professional potters a place to work together, "so they don't have to be alone during the day in their house or in their garage. They can co-work in a space and learn from each other," she says. The co-op is in the process of expanding from their North Monroe Street location to a new 5,000-square-foot building on the Newport Highway with the capacity for more classes and larger, rentable studio artist spaces.
As Bunton's work finds its way all around the region and the world — she just shipped a piece to Sweden — she reflects, "It's neat to have it go to someone's house and be a functional thing that gets used. And when you're gone, there's still all of these things that you've made."
