Renee Schwaller
Renee grew up in Little Chute, WI and vacationed with her family in Door County. While in high school she worked summers at the Cookery. Then, when she was in college, she worked for Abe and Ginka Cohn, (The Potters Wheel), and fell into clay. She has a degree in communications but studied art in college so she saw the possibilities of putting her designs on the pots. She loved the idea of being able to make something useful with her hands and then decorating it.
She spent a year in Minneapolis in school taking a variety of pottery classes. She was eager to move on and establish her own pottery. The farm was available and in 1996 they took the chance. “I’ve thought, sometimes, that I started too soon; that I could have spent more time in school. But being here gave me the time to work on my skills and start a family, so it worked out.”
Making and using hand-made, functional pottery and other objects brings Renee joy, and she hopes she does that for others, too. She wants to make things by hand that will serve a function, a purpose, and be useful for years and years.
