- For ceramic artist, Osa Atoe, of Sarasota, pottery is about more than just creating beautiful objects.

It's a way to connect with her Nigerian ancestors and the indigenous people of Florida who have a long tradition of collecting wild clay.

- My name is Osa Atoe, and I'm a studio potter.

I was living in New Orleans, Louisiana, back in 2013, and I was working in a coffee shop.

My main thing back then was being a musician.

(punk music) ♪ Hey ♪ - I was a punk musician.

I played in bands since I was probably in my early twenties.

So to make ends meet, I made coffee during the day, and one of my coworkers mentioned that there was a new pottery studio in town, and he just thought that I might be into it.

So I ended up taking one class and just falling in love with it.

(upbeat rhythmic music) - If you have a bunch of, you know, manufactured cups or plates or bowls, and they're all in a matching set, and you just grab one, and you throw some food on it.

But with handmade pottery, you know that someone's time is invested in it.

You know that that time is now is a physical object, and you are using something that has literally come from somebody's mind, and it makes the meal more significant or the beverage or anything like that.

- One of the things that's so special about clay is the fact that you can use it in so many different forms.

I think that it gives people a grounding sense.

I mean, you're literally working with the earth.

But the fact that you can use it as a dry powder, a liquid, in its plastic form, you can't do that with wood, right?

So I think there's just something about it being a mutable material and the fact that you're literally working with the ground under your feet.

It's an interesting experience.

- Here locally, I feel she's definitely going to be one of those artists that opens up the doors for other artists.

So she's doing something with her work, her art, her collection of pottery that no one else is doing.

- I collected wild clay samples for many years before I even used it.

I just thought it was interesting.

(water splashing) We're at Sarasota Bay, and we're just a couple blocks from my house.

Before settlers came, this was an indigenous meeting place for millennia.

You can find fossils here.

You can also find clay.

So some of the clay that we found.

It fires to kind of a pale yellowish color, but this is native Florida clay from Sarasota.

Well when it's wet, it's a little bit on the sandy side.

It's very plastic, though, and easy to mold.

I've made little pinch pots with it and fired them.

People who use wild clay in their practice need to be able to collect large amounts of it to build their entire body of work on, and up until recently I didn't have access to large quantities of clay, which is partly why I didn't use it.

- Being in my industry, I'm kind of in the construction industry in general, and so I kinda have my ear to the ground on where projects are happening, where the earth is being disturbed or moved, and so those are actually really good opportunities to access the clay, which could be buried under, you know, 6, 8, 10, 12 feet of soil.

We probably have clay beneath our feet here, but we have no way to access it.

- Commercial clay and wild clay are just, it's night and day, the way that they feel in your hands, it's completely different, the way that they behave, and then also just the amount of labor.

So commercial clay is wonderful because it's already processed; it's ready to go.

With wild clay there's a lot of labor that goes into that.

I would say it's almost the difference between going to the grocery store and buying a bag of spinach and eating spinach outta your garden.

- It is work.

It's not a hobby.

It's more than an interest.

It runs through like every vein in her body.

- I think because of who she is and because she doesn't typically fit into a box of an artist, specifically a ceramic artist, you don't think that someone like Osa that's Nigerian American would even be interested in that type of work, but she is, and it's just really cool to see someone who doesn't typically fit that particular art medium doing that work.

- Kaabo Clay Collective was founded in 2021.

Kaabo means welcome in Yoruba.

That's the language my parents speak to each other.

It's a social and mutual aid network for black ceramicists.

I did start pottery in New Orleans, which is a majority black city, but I was always the only black person in any of my classes.

It's not just the absence of black people in those spaces; it's the absence of black culture.

We have so much to add to clay culture.

We have a long history of making pottery and sculpture.

So Kaabo Clay, it's just been invaluable to me personally.

It's kind of like building what I needed and then understanding that, if I need it, other people need it too.

- There's a lot of art in Sarasota, plenty of it.

The landscape I feel like it needs a little bit more diversity, and I feel like there's a lot more of hidden talent in Sarasota and Manatee that people don't know about, and that's kind of where Osa kind of falls into that.

She's one of those up-and-coming artists that people may know outside of the region.

A lot of people do know Osa outside of the region, but here in Sarasota, I feel like she is not as celebrated as I feel like she should be.

- The lesson that I get from working with clay in general is having to collaborate with the material.

Especially when I work with wild clay, it doesn't behave like commercial clay, and I have to change the way that I respond to it.

If I just try to force my will on it, it just won't work.

Also, there's so much about clay that's about waiting for the right time to do a specific thing, and if you're impatient, it just won't work.

(chuckles) It just will not work.

So clay has taught me to be more patient.

It's taught me to be more gentle, but there's infinite lessons that clay is always teaching.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] For more information on Osa's pottery classes, visit potterybyosa.com.