Local Student’s Pottery to be Featured at Art Fest

Norcross High School senior Melissa Swope will have a booth at the Norcross Art Fest this year, a rare opportunity for the young potter to be seen by tens of thousands of people—and rub elbows with professional artists.

She makes natural, traditional pottery pieces and—perhaps the aspect of her art that stole the hearts of Art Fest organizers—funky, whimsical piggy banks with cork stopper noses. The annual festival will be held on Oct. 1 and 2. 

“It has a calming effect on me,” said Swope of her craft. “It is a way that I can let go. Some people can do sports, I can do art. I get a lot of feedback from people and I really like that,” said the well-spoken young artist.

Some of the vendors at the Art Fest sell out classes at the school where she has studied, the Spruill Center for the Arts in Dunwoody. “It is nerve-racking, but I’m really, really excited just to be there. I’m sure it will be enriching. It will give me a feel for if I want to do this for my career,” she said. 

Swope is a prolific artist. “It usually sits on the dining room table waiting for a relative’s birthday,” she laughed. “When it started filling up, my mom suggested that I start selling my stuff.”

Swope said her pursuit of pottery has always been a very independent endeavor. She has made pottery for seven years and taken classes mostly at the Spruill Center, not at Norcross High—though she has given back to the school through pottery sales and plans to do the same with funds raised at the Fest.

At her first sale a few years ago, she’s raised about $1000 selling her pieces. Swope used that money to send four students to an art class as part of Norcross High School’s International Baccalaureate. “Before you become an IB school, you have a middle years program,” she explained. As part of that program, Swope completed a personal project that included three components: creativity, action and service.

Sponsoring her classmates in an art class, something that she had found so enriching, wrapped all three of those components up nicely. She said she plans to use the funds from Art Fest to sponsor more students in art classes, too.

Swope said that she’s always wanted a pottery wheel at home, but that her mom is afraid she’d never leave the house. “That’s a well-founded fear,” she laughed.

Editor's note: At last reference, we mistakenly referred to Ms. Swope as Ms. Spruill. We aplogize for the mistake.