Pieces from the studio are available online and at the Ilwaco Saturday Market.

The quiet, foggy beaches and streets of Seaview, Washington, have inspired the name of a new pottery studio.

Mariam Matheson is the artist behind Foggy Folk Pottery, which opened in the Pacific County village in March.

A lifelong artist, Matheson started her journey into ceramics at Portland Community College in 2018. After switching her practice to pottery, she’s never looked back.

“I’m giving myself a lot of space to take my time because I view it as an artistic process that will always naturally grow and change,” she said.

Matheson landed on the handbuilding technique, which eschews the use of a pottery wheel in favor of using hands, fingers, and simple tools to pinch, coil, or slab clay into the desired form.

“Everything is very slow, I really liked the meditative process of handbuilding pottery,” she said. “It’s been really fun to create pieces — you can really see that they’re handmade.”

Last year, Matheson held a series of clay handbuilding workshops in Ilwaco, where she also managed a ceramics studio.

The slow pace of life on the Long Beach Peninsula, where she has lived since 2020, has been a boon to creating art.

“Moving out here has really allowed me to take my time with my art,” Matheson said. “I feel like I finally reached a point where I really love the refinement process. I really love looking at it and seeing how it can be more beautiful and more thoughtful in form.”

Another factor has been her residence. Matheson and her husband live in a house where the late Seaview watercolorist Charles Mulvey made a home for 50 years.

Matheson has converted the home’s garage into her pottery studio.

Like Matheson, Mulvey was inspired by the landscape and community of Seaview. He worked from a beach cottage there named The Sea Chest, where he opened an art gallery in 1955.

“We’re continuing the legacy of having an artist in the home,” she said. “It’s really fun to see the response from the community and to meet people.”

Matheson’s focus is on functional pottery, such as mugs. “I get to make mugs in ways that feel really beautiful and artistic and really speak to how I view myself as an artist,” she said. “A mug is something you get to see and use every day. And I really love that about pottery, it’s something you get to interact with and use.”

In addition to online sales via Instagram, this year Matheson’s main outlet will be the Ilwaco Saturday Market.

Meeting other artists in the community and getting involved in the art scene on the North Coast is also high up on her to-do list. “It’s really incredible how many artists there are out here, I’m really excited to start working together,” she said.

Once established, Matheson intends to keep evolving as an artist and try out more techniques, particularly mixing colored clays and silkscreening on pottery.

“I really feel like I’m just starting out,” she said, “and I’m really excited to be part of the community.”

Foggy Folk Pottery

A pottery studio and event space in Seaview

@foggy.folk.pottery