Cotton Lake Pottery

Cotton Lake Pottery, located in Cove, Texas, began operation in March of 2001. Marsha Geer Landers had been working in the ceramic medium since 1979 but was limited in production due to a lack of regular and permanent workspace. She and her family found their dream space overlooking beautiful Cotton Lake on the upper end of Trinity Bay in Chambers County Texas and so made their purchase of land, built their dream home, part of which was a studio and kiln shed. Here Marsha can fire her Raku kiln, her propane fueled, reduction kiln, one of several electric kilns and even do some salt firing.  Currently Marsha is working on crystalline glazes. Her work can be seen at the Art Center of Baytown, located at 110 W. Texas Ave. in Baytown, Texas.  The Art Center is the home of the Art League of Baytown of which Marsha first became a member in 1971 when doing two dimensional art, photography, and some clayart. Her true passion is clay.

Lessons, Workshops and Demonstrations

Marsha gives private lessons at ClayThings studio. You can contact Marsha for additional information at mblanders@verizon.net or call the Art Center of Baytown at 281-427-2222. Business hours for the Art Center are Tuesday-Saturday, 10-4 pm. Holiday hours are Monday-Saturday, 10-6 pm; Sunday, 1-6 pm.

Marsha is also available to demonstrate for your church or social organization but please call to set up a date in advance.

The Origin of My Ash Glazes at Cotton Lake

Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast on September 13, 2008.  Officially, it was a category 2 storm but the tidal surge was as bad as the 1915 storm and worse than the surge to hit Galveston in 1900, although by 1915 Galveston had their seawall to protect the city. The surge in our back yard was 16 feet, nine inches - three inches less than the 17 foot surge in 1915.  Debris from Bolivar Peninsula wound up in our back yard. Sadly, so did three human bodies that were further out in the marsh which is seen beyond the buldozer in these pictures. We did not find them; they could only be seen from the helicopters that routinely patrolled the coastline for that reason. 

I separated the ashes into the following groups - Wood ash, marsh cane ash, mixed debris ash and snow-washed wood ash.  All gave a different effect to the pots, most of which were produced at the same time that "Smiley" showed up a few weeks prior to the storm. She's my alligator friend.