Humans have been working with clay as far back as the Paleolithic Era, some 30,000 years ago. Pottery is the first synthetic human creation, according to the World History Encyclopedia. But in the modern era of American pottery, digging in the earth for clay is no longer a necessity as artists can pay for a variety of textures and colors to bring their creations to life. 

The Nolan Center has a new entryway exhibit showcasing handmade pots from Tawney Crowley’s 2025 middle school art class. The clay used in the pots came from a deposit discovered in 2024 by Crowley’s stepfather while digging to put in pilings on their property at 5.5-Mile Zimovia Highway.

The art teacher used the clay, along with some taken from Anan, to show the students how to process raw clay and build their own pieces.

“He let me know, ‘Hey, I found some clay,’” she said, “And I was like, ‘Hey, that sounds like a fun summer project.’”

She said that after collecting a five-gallon bucket of the clay, it took a lot of experimenting to figure out how to best process it into something usable for pottery. “There was a ton of debris and stuff in it, which was all new to me.”

In the center of the exhibit sits a matte tan pot with black bands at the top and bottom, framing black buttons spaced evenly around the center. This pot — distinct from the surrounding bowls of deep rusty red with a bright shiny gloss — was Crowley’s first experimental piece with the processed clay.

Called a coil bowl, it’s made by rolling the clay in your hands to create little snakes like many children do with Play-Doh. The snakes are then coiled onto themselves and smoothed on the outside, but if you look inside you can identify the individual ridges leftover. 

She said the buttons she painted were inspired by Indigenous button blankets.

After an event at the Nolan Center, Crowley had had a chance to talk with an archeologist who she said told her that pottery wasn’t common in the region’s Native cultures. Crowley said this is likely because of the wet climate and the amount of fire that would be needed to cure it; they instead preferred to weave bowls from plant material. However, she still wanted the design to reflect Wrangell. “It still just felt like a way to honor where it came from.”

Some of the other bowls in the exhibit are coil bowls as well, whereas others are called pinch pots. These primitive dishes, made by slowly pinching the soft clay upward into a bowl shape, are one of the oldest known ways to make pottery, according to Crowley. The coil design emerged not too long after.

“It goes into this whole story of human history and, honestly, this pot has really kind of developed the way that I’m teaching ceramics to my high school students now,” she said. 

The clay mix the students used to make the pieces in the exhibit and the clay her students are working with today includes Anan clay donated to the class by Claire Froehlich, an interpretation and conservation education specialist with the U.S. Forest Service Wrangell District, according to Crowley. She said that they have enough to last them at least a couple more classes and are very careful to conserve whatever scraps they can. 

After the Nolan Center posted about the exhibit, Crowley said that Stephen McKay, a soil expert with the U.S. Forest Service in Petersburg, reached out to her to learn more. 

“He asked me some questions about the clay deposits that I had access to and basically ended up telling me that finding worthwhile clay deposits aren’t rare, but can be very scattered and inconsistent,” she said.

She said that made getting the clay from her own family’s property even more special, now knowing that it was not all that likely of an occurrence. But she says she believes the clay isn’t really theirs to take. 

“That’s actually why I donated it to the Nolan Center,” Crowley said, “I wanted to give this back so that it was kind of like my way of saying, ‘I didn’t take this. I just borrowed it for a while,’ and I want to give it back to other people so that they can see it and appreciate it and learn more about its journey.”