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At this new pottery studio, getting your hands dirty is the whole point


On any given day at Throw Me Something art studio, there might be resin on the stools or streaks of paint and clay on the floor. And that’s OK.

“Pottery shouldn’t be clean and fresh,” insists owner Katie Goodlife. “It should be fun and authentic and make you feel like you can make a mess and not worry about the floors.”

Goodlife opened the studio last summer on Lee Drive, right next door to Light House Coffee. Its blue walls are lined with rows of ceramic pieces, which visitors can pluck from the shelves to paint.

During pottery classes, students massage clay into from-scratch mugs, plates and vases.

“Pottery shouldn’t be clean and fresh. It should be fun and authentic,” says Throw Me Something owner Katie Goodlife.

At resin classes, attendees learn to dye and pour resin on canvas. Goodlife teaches them different pouring techniques. There’s the deliberate pour from a cup as well as a “dirty pour,” where the artists will mix all the colors in a cup and dump them onto a canvas. Attendees use a blow torch to even out the bubbles. All of the classes are BYOB.

Goodlife gets particularly animated when she talks about resin—and she says her customers are just as excited about the medium.

“It mixes up art and science—you know, blow torches and chemicals and wine,” she says with a laugh. “I tell them, ‘If you’re an A-type personality, you might want to drink. Resin is a very loosening experience, because you’re not always able to control it. … But I have never had a disappointed customer yet.”

When Goodlife opened her shop, she hoped to give patrons the same outlet art has always provided her. She taught in public schools for 15 years, balancing teaching and making her own artwork.

She had a Throw Me Something warehouse in the Southdowns area for a couple of years. But as interest grew, she decided it was time for a full-service studio.

“Baton Rouge was seriously in need of a place to go and just have fun and create,” she says. “And we haven’t really had a paint-your-own-pottery place here since I was probably a kid.”

Her shop offers open hours Wednesday through Sunday, when no appointment is required—customers can simply walk in and paint. It also regularly hosts summer camps, ladies nights and various scheduled events, as well as by-appointment classes and birthday parties.

“Ceramics, to me, is just like a zen state for a lot of people. You don’t have to come in with a group of friends. We have individuals, especially women, who will come in and put in their AirPods and zone out and just paint, and they’ll paint for hours. You can tell it’s just like a little therapy.” throwmesomething.com


WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Throw Me Something art studio
Owner Katie Goodlife credits her dad for coming up with this clever play on words for her business’ name. “Throwing is when you’re creating bowls and vases on the wheel,” she explains, “and then of course you have Mardi Gras, so ‘Throw Me Something’ is just a pun between pottery and being Louisiana-based.”


This article was originally published in the March 2020 issue of 225 Magazine.