Pottery
Firefly Valley Design offers a variety of ways to engage with the art of pottery. There are weekly classes for kids and adults, in both the fall and spring. We offer several weeks of youth summer camp. Lastly, we can host a special event for you - a birthday party, bridal shower, or corporate event. Our goal and passion is to help you discover the magic of playing with clay in a comfortable environment for beginners, experts, and everything in between.
Spring Break
Camps
April 1 - 5
April 8 - 12
10am - 4pm
Pottery Camp is a creative and fun week where potters discover new techniques through a spiraling hand-building curriculum in the morning (pinch, slab, coil techniques) in morning hand-building class and wheel throwing techniques in an afternoon one-on-one throwing tutorial. Potters will enjoy the outdoor environment with additional guided activities on the property like rope swings, wooden sculpture, baking, fruit carving, painting, fiber arts and more in a relaxed, quiet outdoor environment.
Our Community
Firefly Valley Design celebrates diversity, prioritizes equity, and lives out inclusion. This is the core of who we are as people and neighbors. We believe in the power of community when it comes together in authentic ways to share gifts and strengths. We aim to create and maintain an environment that is safe, nurturing, and fosters discovery for all gender identities, sexual orientations, ages, abilities, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic levels, and neurodiversity.
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Founder
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Ona Armstrong
Founder and Lead Teacher
I was born a maker, in the mountains of Virginia. I was home-schooled until ten years old, barefoot with a paintbrush in my hand. Raised by artists, musicians and craftspeople, my fondest memories from childhood were of raising goats, weaving, painting, making fairy houses. We built tree houses and played endlessly on our 30 acres outside of Lexington, VA. I was also a dancer from the age of four and continued to dance through high school, touring our area and performing with my troupe. I attended Bennington College in Vermont as a Harcort Scholar, graduating with a degree in ceramics and education in 2000 and graduated again with a Masters of the Arts in Teaching from Bennington in 2003.
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Arriving in Asheville in 2004, I began my teaching journey in Kindergarten at Evergreen Community Charter School. I loved teaching young children, intertwining movement and music with academic skills and social-emotional learning. While I was there, I was able to write plays, make large puppets, coordinate performances, play music, dance, and design a nature playscape.
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In 2017, I left traditional teaching as I made the transition to business owner, exploring ways that I could apply my passion for facilitating my own and other's creativity and expression.
Arts for Expression and Connection
As the founder of Firefly Valley Design and Consulting, I am a traveling arts consultant, offering arts for personal expression and interpersonal connection. As a teacher, I am warm and funny. I am prepared and professional, working in collaboration with program directors, therapists and families/corporations to arts accessible to everyone. I engage groups of people in artistic endeavors that allow for expression and connect them with each other. Arts for expression and connection is my life's calling.
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I am so excited to be on this journey with you!
