Hi, I’m Amber Baughman and I am the Maker of Pine Cove Pottery. Within this website integrates a few themes within my making.
The medium I use to create my pottery is with a variety of different clays. A new found love that I have enjoyed exploring is wild clay. Clay that I have harvested within the landscape where I live. This clay inspires me as I dig, process and work with my hands what I have discovered.
The colors and glazes I most enjoy are the earthen colors with an occasional exploration of different variances of shades and mixed combinations of other pigments. Sometimes a bright color will draw me in as I experiment.
A word that would best describe my process of pottery is exploration! Exploring has so many mysteries and wonders about it. Experimenting with different clays, exploring glazes, types of clay and the variety of colors to create with seems to enable me to enjoy my process more.
These people are my support system. They are the most important people in my life. They make me smile, love me and walk with me as I develop my skills in pottery and writing.
My husband and I have six children. Four that are married and eight grand children that envelope my heart. Each one of these people have beautiful stories that make them unique as God works in their lives and develops their interests, gifts and abilities.
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My family
NATURAL WORLD
I had come accustomed to the natural world after mountain living as a child.
The dirt road I grew up on was an old stage coach road.
Down the winding pathway on the road was a large ditch that would inhabit a small bridge.
This bridge would connect me to one side of the terrain and to the other continuing on towards a dirt road that would lead to open meadows and forested areas.
It was in this world that I was drawn into as a child for my imagination to wonder, grow and play. I had no boundaries in this world and everything became my best of friends.
Trees whispered and talked as the fall winds would create conversations within them. Summer was filled with discoveries at the creek and constantly hiking to the nearby caves. Winter and spring fell together as each of those seasons brought life in their own way.
This world would be my introduction into a lifetime of delights as I would wonder and create with the elements around me.
It would be later in life and within the in between time of the years of marriage, children and the responsibilities of the everyday rhythm’s that life’s challenges had caught up to me. Eventually I had found I was lost and needed to find my way back.
One day I went searching for answers in the only way I knew how. I took a step in a direction not knowing where the path would lead.
It was in 2020 that I was introduced to a program where I would receive my certification as a NATURALIST through the AUDUBON NATURE CENTER in Colorado.
This program would captivate my heart as I would learn new skills about the ecosystems and habitats around me.
It would be an introduction of educating myself in the natural world and studying all that it had to offer me.
Psalm 111:2
Great are the works of the Lord they are studied by all who delight in them.
So there I went, studying the natural world learning about God and the world He created.
WRITING AND BOOKS
There have been an endless amount of books that I have read.
On an occasion I have been known to read a good literature book with a story that would captivate me.
Other times I’ve read to understand about a particular subject and still other times I would read whatever came my way for the pure pleasure of words.
It was in books I found me. They became my mentors and dearest friends.
Sometimes we would part ways as I grew out of their ideas and on to something else but always filing the conversations I have had with them for another time.
These conversations grew into writing as I began to ponder their ideas and write my thoughts about them.
Mother Theresa showed me what mercy was all about and how you are to give everything you've got in helping someone in need no matter what the cost is.
C.S. Lewis helped me to find story and define my story when my story was lost through the Chronicles of Narnia.
Cal Newport in his book Deep Work gave me permission to study and enjoy it giving its fruit of learning a subject well.
Ric Ergenbright a photographer helped me to see beauty in images as he connected me to the natural world and the words of God
In The Secret Garden I saw the main character transform before my eyes when life gives you purpose.
Writing became a way of life for me as I placed my thoughts on paper.
This would provoke ideas, and learning opportunities.
CREATE
The secret place within me is the zeal to create. It’s where the shaping begins.
It’s where the materials I use are right before me, and how I will use them.
It’s in asking myself what am I inspired to create?
In creating, this relationship begins between myself and the Creator.
Creating is about the invitation to make, allowing a practice to stir me in working with God.
To make means being involved with and being a participant in the language of my art.
Within this realm of art making, it reveals who I am as an artist and my personality as I create.
When creating it awakens me to possibilities that enter into my life.
Creating a place and time to study is at the heart of where my ideas flow.
These ideas take form shaping and transforming what God is doing in me as I reflect and determine what it is about art that I enjoy so much.
It’s about my relationship that it forms with God, with me and with my materials I use.