Awen is a small studio in Raymond, Alberta, where I teach handbuilding, make my own work, and open the doors a handful of sessions each season. Many of the people who come have never touched clay. If you want a connected and communal creative experience, Awen Growth Creative is the place for you.

THE STUDIO

At Awen Growth Creative you'll find a working pottery studio that is hands-on, unhurried, and welcoming to everyone.

SEE UPCOMING CLASSES

AN EVENING HERE

Over three hours or so, with a small group and no experience required, you sit down and build one thing from start to finish.

You arrive after work and take a seat at a long table with a handful of other people, most of whom have never worked with clay either. There is no wheel and nothing to catch up on. With me beside you the whole way, you spend the evening making one thing by hand — a bowl, a mug, a small vase — and you leave with something you made yourself.

hi, I'm naomi wendorff

I came to clay in 2021, but have spent most of my lifetime teaching. When the two arrived together, I settled right in.

Within a year of my first pottery class, my own teacher asked me to take over hers, and I have taught handbuilding at the Oldman River Potters Guild ever since.

Working with clay was new, but teaching was not. It began with swimming lessons as a teenager and continued through a degree in education, a degree in kinesiology, and years spent in classrooms across southern Alberta.

Before pottery I built and sold several businesses and homeschooled my four children for the better part of a decade, and through all of it teaching stayed the constant. When clay arrived, I recognized it right away and the seed that became Awen Growth Creative was born.

THE LOCATION

We make and experiment, connect and create. The walls and trees have stood for over a century, and they are a warm reminder that the slow way is often the lasting one.

Everything happens inside a house built in 1901, in the heart of the town of Raymond, Alberta.