Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate Waltman and Erin Younge.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Kate Waltman came to Seagrove, NC as a hopeful young potter. The Seagrove area, in the center of the state’s rolling piedmont landscape, boasts over 80 working studios and multiple centuries of pottery making. Drawn to the allure of an artist community and enamored with clay, Kate found the pull of this charming little town irresistible.
For her first decade in Seagrove, Kate worked in a converted tool shed while dreaming of a better location and studio space. Her ideal building was on the historic Pottery Highway just outside of town known as The Triangle Service Station. It was built as a restaurant in the early 20th century and was quickly turned into an auto repair shop with gas pumps and basic goods. In 1945 an addition was added to the building to service large cargo trucks for Luck’s Cannery, just up the road. When the plant closed in the 1980’s, the service station could no longer sustain itself and was left in disrepair for over 30 years. In 2018, Kate purchased the three-room abandoned garage without much money, an evolving plan, and lots of hope. She quickly realized the nearly insurmountable task of rehabilitating a derelict building alone and asked Erin Younge to join her in the new endeavor.
Kate and Erin had worked together in many capacities, including firing wood kilns together and making collaborative art. Their strengths and personalities complimented each other and together they co-founded The Triangle Studio. The building now houses three pottery studio spaces, a sales gallery, and a large wood kiln out back.
Seagrove is home to the largest collective of ceramic artists living within a twenty mile radius of each other in the US. This type of community requires member-led organizational efforts for creating and marketing special events. Kate and Erin have taken turns serving on the board of The Seagrove Area Pottery’s Association (SAPA), and both volunteer their time for The North Carolina Pottery Center, STARWorks, and The Randolph County Arts Guild.
The Triangle Studio’s gallery features their individual pottery with a wide variety of work including dinnerware, storage vessels, decorative vases, planters, sculptures, big pots, and jewelry. There is also work by a rotating cast of apprentices. The Triangle Studio creates new work for each special event, shares clay demonstrations, and hosts guest vendors and outside artists.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Kate Waltman spent a decade making pots in a converted tool shed, living in a dirt floor log cabin, and teaching at night to save enough money to start her dream studio. She pieced together a living through home sales, craft shows, teaching workshops, sending pots to galleries, and the occasional solo show or lecture. It took her 8 years to amass the down-payment for the building that would become a gallery, studio, wood kiln site in just the right place on the Historic Pottery Highway.
In 2018, Kate was able to use what she had saved to buy an abandoned service station just half a mile from the downtown center. The building had become mainly storage for the previous owners. Grease from 50 years of oil changes coated the floors with decades of dirt and trash littered on top. Kate spent the next year cleaning the space while still making and selling pots out of her home just down the road.
Once Kate and Erin embarked on renovations on The Triangle Studio things moved very quickly. Erin grew up using construction tools and together they built framing, windows, doors and trim to delineate the spaces into a gallery and three artist studios. In the midst of renovations in 2019 Kate opened the gallery for the Seagrove Wood Fire Pottery Tour which felt like an incredible accomplishment. Renovations continued between events as they added kilns, gallery fixtures, and cleaned up the grounds. Many generous local potters gave or lent tools and equipment to help them along the way. The support and encouragement they received from their amazing community made the renovations possible. By October, The Triangle Studio gallery was officially open with limited hours for the fall season. They did not have heat or running water in the building yet, but the gallery was operational. In the next few months, they worked to get the basic necessities installed before winter and had a successful fiscal quarter under their belt. But as you can tell by the timeline a huge struggle was on the horizon as 2020 crested into view.
By mid-March 2020, just when Kate and Erin planned to welcome the public back again into their new gallery, the Corona Virus hit the U.S and everything shut down. Craft shows were cancelled, conferences were postponed, and teaching classes were unsafe until further notice. Everything about their craft was social and interactive, and it all came to a screeching halt. The plan was to establish the physical gallery first and then work by The Triangle Studio artists could go online. That two or three year online shop plan now had to be executed in three days. They sold pots on Etsy and continued to work on the infrastructure of the building and the business.
This global event was tragic for everyone, so much was lost, and for Kate and Erin it had a devastating effect on their momentum and bottom line. For two years they scraped by with unimaginable resilience. The following year they saw events announced and then canceled over and over. They participated in a couple Seagrove pottery tours, but under masking restrictions and all outdoors with social distancing in place. Remarkably, when most small businesses fail in the first year under optimal conditions they overcame everything holding them back.
In 2022, when the world seemed to open back up, they pursued every opportunity assuming some would get cancelled. They applied to every grant, event, craft show and teaching opportunity anyone was offering and did them all. By comparison, that year was just as hectic and stressful as 2020 because every event was uncertain, disjointed, and surrounded by a cloud of apprehension. Despite the uncertainty of the new world Kate and Erin found themselves in, they came out of those years with a thriving business to push forward. In between each hurdle there was an undercurrent of tasks. Setting up gas kilns, firing with other potters, resourcing materials, organizing events, and making pots. They had built and accumulated the equipment and facilities to accomplish more of their future plans. They started to hone the event organizing and marketing aspects of the business while bringing on apprentices. Apprentices are artists early in their careers eager to learn the trade and craft of pottery while helping to run the day to day operations. Through all these aspects of business, craft making, material sourcing, and community building they have been able to accomplish so much in this tiny town of Seagrove. The community they built around themselves allowed the next step in the plan possible. Kate needed to build a large wood burning kiln at the studio.
A large wood kiln is a huge financial endeavor as well as a physical feat. The only way Kate could afford a new kiln was to build with reclaimed high temperature bricks. She participated in a massive brick salvaging project with several other potters in Tennessee in 2021. The five of them restacked and assembled for moving 96,000 lbs. of high temperature brick in an exhausting 3 day undertaking. This project taught her the skills to repeat a similar venture closer to home. With her new ability to create and manage a crew for palletizing bricks and logistical understanding of trucking heavy things long distances Kate organized a brick reclamation project of her own. In 2023, Kate and four other potters from the Seagrove area deconstructed and moved an industrial tile kiln that was the length of a football field.
Using the brick from these projects, Kate broke ground on her kiln in January of 2025. The Triangle Studio’s Anagama was built over the following 6 months and required the help of 26 other ceramic artists and students. This kiln build had international participation with MFA students and professors from The Estonian Academy of The Arts (EU) helping at the beginning of the build. Many potters from the Seagrove community showed up to offer expertise, interns from the ceramics program at STARWorks and younger potters from the area that wanted experience also came to lend a hand. Brick by brick the kiln came into existence. The Triangle Studio team spent the past summer making pots to fill the kiln. It was successfully fired in September with excellent results and another burn is scheduled for the end of the year.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Kate Waltman is the owner and co-founder of The Triangle Studio, which houses several artists studios, a collective gallery, and a recently completed large wood kiln. Kate has built a robust apprenticeship program that has launched eight new makers into their early career. She shows her pots internationally and has lectured and taught throughout the USA.
Her pottery career began by talking her way into an assistantship at Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center as a freshman in high school. She was hired on as a demonstrating thrower by 16 years old and opened her first legal business to sell her pots at craft fairs. She graduated from Alfred University in 2010 and has been making pots in Seagrove, NC ever since. The life of a studio potter can be isolated and six years into her full time studio practice, Kate decided to pursue a wider network of ceramic artists, hoping to gain the opportunity to travel. She has been a guest artist and lecturer at international conferences and symposiums, including NCECA, The North Carolina Potter’s Conference, WoodFire NC, The Kohila Large Wood Fire Symposium (Estonia), Young Wood Firer’s Symposium (Denmark), and the Wild Clay and Wood Firing Symposium (Finland). During her time in her home studio and abroad, Kate honed her voice in clay through a combination of modern and historical influences.
Kate’s pots are made using local materials, boldly carved with historically inspired floral patterns influenced by the Folk Art Movement and Art Deco design. Her vessels are all sizes, but she has become known for her larger work, the biggest of which reaches five feet tall. All are wood fired and salt glazed. Kate is enamored with the surface left behind by fire directly touching the pots, leaving ash deposits, altering her surface design, and ultimately showing the history of how the pot came into existence. Kate’s commitment to wood firing has led her, to date, helping build 8 wood kilns, and fire 24 different kilns in 5 countries, some many times. The expertise she amassed over the past 23 years culminated in building her own wood kiln at The Triangle in the first half of 2025.
Erin Younge was introduced to ceramics as a teenager through her high school art teacher who was a potter. She pursued ceramic classes in college at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro until all she was taking were art courses. This influenced her decision to become an art major. After achieving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture she entered into the Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics program at East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, NC. That program enriched her technical knowledge and educational experience, and connected her to the North Carolina Pottery Center (NCPC) in Seagrove and nearby STARworks. This led to a ceramic residency at NCPC and to live in Seagrove for a short time in the summer of 2014. During that summer she was immersed in the pottery capital of the US, and met lots of local potters including Kate Waltman, which turned into a lasting friendship.
Following graduation from the MFA program at ECU in 2015 Erin accepted a ceramic residency position at STARworks. That program was less than six months old without a full time director. Erin applied to their open call for the Clay Studio Director position, and was hired in 2016 to build an international educational resident program. During her time as Director she maintained the facilities, created educational programs for children up to career level ceramic artists, hosted multiple international resident artists throughout the year, and created production lines of ceramic items to bring money into the program. Her time at STARworks culminated in co-organizing their first International Ceramic Conference: WoodFire NC. For Erin, that conference was a confluence of both her artistic interests and her gained organizational skills. She enjoyed her position, but due to all her administrative duties she had no time for a studio practice.
Erin was proud of what she had accomplished, but missed the creativity of the craft she loved. She confided this desire to her friend and potter Kate who had just bought an abandoned gas station on the Pottery Highway in Seagrove. Needless to say when Kate enticed Erin with an opportunity to build a studio and gallery space she jumped at the chance. She put all of her skills to work towards the dream of creating and running a pottery business. After leaving her full-time position at STARworks to start The Triangle Studio with Kate; Erin took on a part-time position at the NC Pottery Center coordinating the NC Potter’s Conference in March of 2020. Once the CoVid 19 pandemic shut down large event gatherings she left NCPC to teach at Montgomery Community College (MCC).
Teaching has always been a source of artistic joy for Erin. She loves passing on knowledge and cheerleading those in the imaginative process. She taught art courses in graduate school then workshops at STARworks, and during her time at MCC her creativity blossomed again. Since it coincided with her decision to go full time making pottery, teaching at the community college felt like a unique immersion of inspiration and focus that helped to broaden her studio practice. Teaching such a diverse course curriculum reminded her of the wide varied methods she enjoys.
Erin relishes a diverse studio practice of clay hand-building, throwing on the wheel and slip-casting. Her thrown tableware pieces are decorated in slip-trailed patterns and a color palette inspired by her grandmother’s Pyrex dishes from the 1960s and 1970s. Her most popular slip patterns include the Infinite Wheat and Daisy Chain series. Erin participates in seasonal events by making classic decorative gourds and holiday ornaments. She loves to hand build animal sculptures and vessel series, often with a mythical twist, some of her favorite creatures to make include jackalopes, unicorns, jackarams, dragons and chickens.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Not every small business story starts at the beginning of a pandemic but so many small businesses had to survive it no matter what year they began. The Triangle Studio doesn’t believe they know any special secrets to success or one right way to do anything. They do know you have to keep trying whether you succeed or fail at anything small or big. Try different tactics for marketing, business models or supplementing with other types of work to make it happen. Be willing to allow yourself to try new things and change plans whenever necessary. Play to your strengths whether you are a builder, educator, creative or all of the above. Never forget that you have or can find community wherever you are. Make connections in the communities around you by joining a guild, an organization or an educational space for inspiration and help in furthering your goals. The answers are all around us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thetrianglestudio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_triangle_studio/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetrianglestudionc
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/kayetwaltman/
