Fired Up

Artist GRAYSON TOAL grew up around pottery, paint, and kilns, and now she’s endeavoring to give others the chance to make their own creations and explore their artistic side. Toal is preparing to launch Polka Dot Pottery Studio, a paint-your-own-pottery studio in Wilmington’s The Forum shopping center in June. 

At Polka Dot Pottery Studio, customers will have the chance to choose a ready-to-paint ceramic object, or bisque, paint it, and then pick it up in a few days after studio staff have glazed and fired it in a kiln to give the pottery piece a glossy finish and ensure durability.  

“It will be a place where you don’t need a reservation, and you can just walk in and paint pottery,” Toal says, adding that her location will be the only studio in Wilmington focused fully on paint-your-own-pottery, or PYOP.  She hopes to offer a variety of 400 to 500 shapes to paint.  

“Wilmington is growing, and we need more parent-friendly, kid-friendly places,” she says. “It’s important to have creative spaces.  I’ve been getting a lot of messages from parents who are excited about having a place where their kids can come too.” 

Art has always been a part of Toal’s life, even when she pursued other career options. Toal, who was born in Lake Wylie, near Charlotte, earned her B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and she taught as an adjunct professor in the English Department at UNCW for two years. Still, Toal continued to create art – specifically paintings. “Since I was twenty, I was always selling and making art, it was like a side gig,” Toal says, adding that she eventually decided to focus on her art full-time.  

For the past two years, Toal has been a full-time artist and operates her business called GERB Art LLC. “I’m just doing what I love to do, and what I feel I’m good at,” she says.  

Through her paintings, Toal enjoys exploring the complexities of girlhood and womanhood and incorporates vibrant colors. Her paintings have been showcased in various galleries and places in Wilmington and North Carolina.  She works on commission with clients and offers paintings and made-to-order giclée prints of her work through her business website. While she loves painting, expanding her entrepreneurial focus to include a pottery business is something she says she’d been thinking about doing since she was a teen. 

Pottery has been a big part of Toal’s family, and her parents, she says, created an environment that nurtured and inspired a love for art and creativity as she grew up with her two siblings. “My parents had a little art room in our house with all the materials, and you could get messy and have fun,” she says.  

With her launch of Polka Dot Pottery, Toal is following in the footsteps of her mom, ALICIA TOAL, a pottery artist whom Grayson Toal says opened one of Charlotte’s first contemporary PYOP studios in 1998 called Dish It Out. Her dad, DJ TOAL, joined the pottery world in 1999 by starting Bisque Imports, a company based in Belmont. She says her dad started it in response to her mom’s requests for more variety in pottery shapes for her business.   

Her mom sold her PYOP studio in 2016, Toal says, but she has many fond memories about spending time there, including working there as a teenager. She learned a lot about how PYOPs work. 

“Every day after school, me and my siblings would go to Dish It Out, and we’d be around people who were painting pottery,” Grayson Toal says.  “We’d paint pottery and sometimes we’d do our homework, but we’d still be looking around, just being in that creative zone every day. Then when we went home, all of cupboards would be filled with pottery that we painted such as plates, mugs, and bowls. We were always surrounded by stuff we had made.” 

Grayson Toal plans to continue painting and operating GERB Art, but she’s looking forward to what Polka Dot Pottery will bring to both her and customers. “Opening Polka Dot Pottery is a combination of all of the wonderful things I love about teaching and being around creativity, and around people who want to create,” she says. “It ties together everything I truly love.”   

As for her customers, Grayson Toal says she looks forward to people having a fun, meaningful experience. “People tend to just dial in, and that’s part of what I love is that no one is on their phones,” she says. “Whether they came with their mom, their child, their friends, or a date, you can see people connecting with whoever they came with. It’s amazing to watch. Everybody, no matter what, can create, paint and bring something home that can be functional and used in your house or given as a gift. That’s my favorite thing.” 

To view more of photographer Maggie Beck’s work, go to www.magsphotography.shop.

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