Our Teachers
Your cheerleaders, support crew, technical advisors, & creative council. And, sometimes, a bit more when you need it.
Rob Sutherland
Rob came back from Oxford University with a PhD in Molecular Ecology and took a sharp turn. After taking his first pottery class in 2001, he was hooked, and has been running Good Dirt since 2004. Rob has a love of music and plays cello, mandolin, violin, guitar, ukulele, and anything else he can gets his hands on. Rob sees the parallels between the rhythm and fluidity of music to the movement and dance of creating on the wheel. His pottery focuses on the beauty of form, the poetry of line. He loves surfaces created through woodfiring, where the pot is painted by the ash and path of fire through the kiln, collaborating with, not controlling, process.
Instagram #gooddirt_athens
Facebook @gooddirtathens
Rob teaches Special Projects, Int/Adv Wheel classes & Old Time String Band music class.
Jessica Sutherland
Jessica is the other half of Good Dirt. It all started when she took a Try Clay class and caught the pottery bug. Or, her inner control-freak perfectionist got slapped in the face. And, she wanted more. (I guess that’s something to bring up to my therapist). Teaching at Good Dirt has been an honor and a privilege - being allowed and trusted to be a part of someone’s artistic journey feels like her highest calling (and she promises she doesn’t talk in third person in class. Usually.) Her pieces truly embrace the idea of slow craft, intentionally building layers and taking time with each and every piece. She draws from life without sketching, hoping to capture the immediacy and spontaneity in her linework, and breathe life into each piece. She feels that pottery is a way to invite art, and beauty, in some small way, into the everyday. And, now, she is finished talking in third person, because it’s weird…
Instagram @gooddirt_athens
Facebook @gooddirtathens
She’s your gal if you’re interested in Surface Design and Decoration.
Kyle Jones
Kyle Jones has been a practicing ceramicist for over 10 years. He is originally from Dahlonega, Georgia. His ceramic work has been purchased for numerous public and private collections.
Kyle teaches Int/Adv wheel classes.
Caryn Van Wagtendonk
Caryn van Wagtendonk studied ceramics here at UGA and received her MFA from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Later, she spent five years in Los Angeles working in the art department of a custom tile company. In 2004, she and her husband made the move back to Georgia. Over the years she has been raising kids, teaching classes at Good Dirt and working out of her home studio. Caryn teaches a variety of handbuilding techniques for sculptural as well as functional work, tile-making, majolica glazing and more. She sees her class as a place to learn new skills, experiment and, most of all, have fun.
Instagram @cvwceramics
Caryn teaches our Sculpture, Handbuilding and specialty surface classes, like Majolica.
Frank jackson
I majored in painting for my BFA and printmaking for my MFA. I then went on to get an MLS and worked as an art librarian before retiring in 2016. Much of my approach to ceramics reflects this background as seen in my interest in surface decoration and art history. I teach handbuilding with a focus on building with slabs and using various surface decoration techniques. I want my classes to be a place where you can learn new techniques and improve your skills in an environment that is encouraging and fun.
Instagram: @frankjacksonceramics
Frank teaches Handbuilding and is a master of using tissue transfers, underglaze, and decals in his surface decoration.
rebecca seidl
I am the studio manager here at Good Dirt, and I teach beginners on the wheel. Pottery is a way for me to connect to the Earth and connect with myself in a deeper way. I love being able to share this with my students and help them find space for their creativity to flourish. It is so important to have a creative outlet, and pottery can be such a healing process. I specialize in mugs and bowls, but I like to experiment with other forms. I am known around the studio for my “tree bark” mugs.
Instagram @groundedcreations
Facebook @groundedcreations
Etsy Shop Grounded Creation Pots
Rebecca is our goddess of beginners.
Tommy Jordan
I am a musician and singer who plays guitar, old time banjo and mandolin. I started performing with I joined my first band at age 14 and haven’t stopped since. I am currently in at least four or five bands, including MrJordanMrTonks, String Theory and a world-music duo with Rob Sutherland. As a lifetime song collector, I enjoy sharing my songs and teaching string band music to the folks in the music class at Good Dirt.
Tommy teaches our Old Time String Band class.
Leeza Romanovski
Leeza loves clay, it’s taken over her life since she was 12. She has a deep appreciation of ergonomics and tries to create things that work with life, like plates that take effort to chip and planters with huge drainage holes. She’s also a huge nerd for miniatures, figurines, and play sets. You can eat breakfast and drink coffee with her work while looking to it for questionable moral support.
Leeza has worked as the director of programming at Labyrinth Studios in Tampa and graduated with a BFA in Ceramics from UGA in 2022.
She regularly participates in local markets, and you can find her @whatbutts on Instagram or by email at leeza.rom11@gmail.com
Leeza teaches our Youth Wheel and Hope Havens classes, as well as our Try Clay classes.
Mathew Meunier
Originally trained as a carpenter, Mathew comes from a long line of skilled craftsmen and craftswomen. A chance encounter with a handmade pot in a friend's kitchen led him to the pottery studio and to a new way of working with his hands. Mathew spent three years working as apprentice to wood-firing potter Mark Shapiro in western Massachusetts and one year as an artist-in-residence at the Kansas City Clay Guild before establishing his own studio in Farmington, Georgia.
You can find more work and info about Mathew on his website www.mathewmeunier.com
Stephanie Johnson
My love affair with ceramics started about 15 years ago. I watched a potter throw on the wheel and instantly knew that I wanted to learn the art form. Over the years I've learned the tricks of the trade from classes at Good Dirt, and now am teaching the handbuilding Try Clay class on Sunday afternoons. Whether painting designs on mugs or creating intricate patterns on slabs of clay and using them to hand build forms, my focus tends to be on surface decoration. I really enjoy making functional forms and then decorating them to add a little flair.
Stephanie teaches our Sunday afternoon Try Clay class in Handbuilding, and is one of our workshop teachers.
mary mayes
My relationship with clay and with Good Dirt began over 20 years ago at the old location downtown. I’ve been hanging around in one capacity or another more or less ever since. Over the years, my own interests in ceramics have developed to embrace the folk forms, materials, and methods of my native Georgia culture. Still, I continue to grow as a potter and find joy in the clay community at Good Dirt. I appreciate the opportunity to share folk pottery traditions with my friends and students there.
Instagram @maryminathens
Facebook @mary.mayes.79
Mary teaches classes in folk pottery traditions.
BEthany Hamilton-Jones
Bethany Hamilton-Jones: As a long-time Athenian, I love the emphasis this community places on art. My work is functional with a focus on color and movement. My favorite part of teaching Family Try Clay is the diverse interpretations of the project; often the children are the ones that take the most risks! I hope to explore clay, function, and form for many more years to come!
Bethany teaches our Sunday afternoon Try Clay class in Handbuilding, and is one of our workshop teachers.
allison barron
Honor nature. Create Art.
“Those are my principles. If you don’t like them... well, I have others.” -Groucho Marx
Allison is one of our Try Clay teachers and workshop leaders.