I'm grateful you found my page! My name is Melissa. I’m the potter behind Fat Bottom Pots. I’ve fallen impractically in love with clay at the age of 48.

Colorado is home, though I’m a PA native and Jawn at heart. I am inspired by the colors and layers of the American West. I appreciate sunrises, cool summer nights under stars, and open sky. I think my work is a little tiny way of paying homage to the beauty all around me. My work is hand carved ~ I enjoy the process of carving more than I enjoy the process of being shaped (as life does).

I bet you’re wondering how that happened. I am too. We can figure that out as we go. It’s a long story and I don’t know the ending yet. I hope it’s a good tale, in the end.

My mark is three dashes ~ they are carved into each piece I throw, like they are carved into my very body. Those dashes represent my three kids, who I am lucky to know, and grateful to have been chosen to parent. Kobe and Hutch, rather my handsome mutts, round out the herd.

I love the game of golf and I practice and teach yoga in my local community. . I find baking bossy (so precise) and will never be a hand model. I have discovered the synchronicity or synergy between my yoga practice and creating my art. Each time I am on my mat, I strive to allow my body to inform me of what my practice will feel like that day. In the same way, as I sit at the pottery wheel, I allow my art to come through my hands in the way it wants to be created. In this awareness, I have learned that if I allow myself to stay supple, relax my grip, I just might make it through the fire.