This article is from the spring 2026 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Virginia Kinnier | Photos by Courtney Mason
Right off Michigan Avenue in Midtown Mobile, there is treasure hiding in plain sight — or treasures, if we’re counting. Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty of them stacked on crates in an art studio behind a single home. Some big, some small, some purple, some green, some hailing from the ’90s, the ’80s, even the ’70s, while some are fresh-faced newcomers from last week or maybe even today. Regardless of age, size, or color, they are all the creative work of one man, Charles Smith, an international ceramics artist who is known not just for his permanent exhibit at the Mobile Museum of Art, but by collectors all over the world and in renowned galleries and exhibits like the National Museum of American Art in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the American Craft Museum in New York City.
Charles first started throwing pots 52 years ago as a student at Bishop State Community College here in Mobile before he pursued an undergraduate degree in art education at Jackson State University, but it was a while before he realized he was an artist.
“I was in a color theory class at Jackson State with a professor everyone hated, so I was dreading this class, but I had to have it in order to graduate,” Charles recalls. “This professor knew I was in ceramics, and he saw some of my drawings and said, ‘Smith, if you take some of these drawings and put them on your pots, you’d have an ace in the hole, you’d have a sure thing.’ I thought he was crazy. I just brushed it off. Fifteen years later I was still searching for my ace in the hole and ‘me’ in this thing, and I grabbed one of those old drawing books and flipped through it, and I thought, ‘I’ll be damned. He was right.’ The light came on, and once I got that information in my head, it was on like a chicken bone. These images were things that have been in my head forever: birds, fish, water. It was simple. And it quickly became my signature design.”
Charles’s wife was one of the first to question his affinity for water features in his designs.
“My wife asked me one day, ‘Why do you keep putting those water elements in your designs?’ And I had no idea what she was talking about. But you know, being born and raised in Mobile, we are surrounded by water, all these tributaries and bays. We don’t notice it like somebody would who came down here from Denver or Nebraska or wherever. But these images are in our subconscious. And sure enough, when you look at my art, you see the birds, the fish, the water movement. That’s a Mobile style. You don’t have to flip the pot over to see my signature to know that it’s my style, unique to Mobile.”
And a lot of people seem to like that style. Charles has single collectors with 200 to 300 pieces of his work in their homes. Despite his success and following in the art world, Charles keeps it simple, continuing to throw pots right in his backyard studio in Mobile, sticking to the process he’s been following for years.
“A lot of this is muscle memory and learning how to think and store ideas,” Charles explains. “I can draw designs on a sketch pad because I know the clay, I know the chemical makeup, I know the strength. I know how much to pull for what sized object I’m going to make. But once I have the clay, I have to be ready for it. I have to psyche myself out for that day. I need to have on the right music. I need to have everything set up. I have to be in the right frame of mind.”
His process didn’t arrive overnight. It took years of experience, trial and error, trusting his instinct, and a little bit of time to help him arrive in the artistic mindset that he is in today.
“When I was younger, I had this thing about being perfect,” Charles admits. “Everything had to be perfect, perfect lines. And then as I got older, I found out, you know, these little flaws don't bother anything. I'm not going to worry about this mold that’s somewhere that nobody's going to see. You know, I'm not going to worry about this little mark here. I’ve had some things that I've tossed and thought they were just okay and come back in 20, 30 years and picked those pots up that I sort of had rejected in the past and, it's like, I don't see the flaw anymore. It’s age, it’s wisdom, that’s good stuff.”
Charles credits the privacy and independence of his workspace with his ability to pivot peacefully and solve his problems creatively.
“In a studio setting, there’s no trash and there’s no mistakes, so if I fire something that’s a mistake, those are happy accidents.”
While time may have given him wisdom, it has also increased the cost of his supplies.
“When I bought those kilns about 25 to 30 years ago, they were $1,400 a piece,” Charles explains. “Now they’re $7 to 10,000 a piece. When I first started, you could get a ton of clay — that’s 80 twenty-five pound blocks — delivered to your door from Pittsburgh for $225, which included shipping and the whole nine yards. Now that ton would probably cost $1,500, and you have to pick it up your damn self. So you better know what you’re doing. Clay is one dollar a pound now. It used to be 16 cents. Who can come in and experiment with that? You have to know your stuff.”
And knowing your stuff is a lot more complicated that it sounds.
“You have to understand the chemical makeup of the clay body that you’re working with,” Charles explains. “This stuff is real. It’s not Play-Doh. When you look at it as a living organism, the way this clay reacts to a change in weather, you have to work in an environment that the clay likes because it’s a natural, breathing source. I know how this clay dries, I know that it loves the spring and the fall, so if I work in those seasons, I don’t have to worry about putting air-conditioning on it and fans. It naturally dries.”
When Charles starts talking oxidation, gasses, natural oils, melting iron, and imitating solar flashes, it’s easy to forget you’re in an art studio instead of a science lab. But really, an art lab might be more accurate.
“Stacking kilns is a science in and of itself,” Charles says. “You don't just stick pots in there. If you want different glazes that have different effects, you have to use a specific shelf in the kiln. You know, if I was firing that red piece, that red would be at the lower shelf, because that kiln is hotter at the top compared to the lower shelf. Although it's the same temperature, you have different degrees. Anything like 10, 15, 20 degrees off, it makes a big difference. It’s not happenstance, it’s just being in control of it.”
How did he arrive at this level of expertise?
“Well, it’s just all that experience, years of experience and experiments. Just doing something stupid and seeing what happened.”
As far as how these experiments take form in his head, it’s very natural.
“It's instinct,” Charles says. “You do it and when you see the result, then you know to put it into your working environment.”
He points to the eyes of a marine figure on a pot behind him. Again, just keep it stupid. I used this drill-bit because it just happened to be in this box over here. I picked it up and stuck it there in the clay, and suddenly, I had forward movement. It became a fish. If you didn’t have the eye, you wouldn’t have the movement.”
But not everyone interprets his designs as they were intended, and Charles is totally fine with that.
“A guy called me one time, and he said, ‘Do you still have the double-headed serpent?’ I said, ‘The double-headed what?’ He said, ‘The double-headed serpent.’ I said, ‘No, I’ve never had that.’ He said, ‘Go outside and look on the shelf at the pot sitting right there on the end because I saw it yesterday.’ I went out and I looked at it and I said, ‘Well I’ll be damned, that is a double-headed serpent.’ So people see things differently than I do. One woman kept seeing a whale tail, and I said, ‘Well, if you see a whale tail, then it’s a whale tail. If the check clears, it’s a whale tail.’”
It's not just pottery that Charles has used to leave his mark in the art world. Around Mobile you will find sculptures bearing the contribution of his handiwork and design at city landmarks like Government Plaza, Isom Clemon Civil Rights Memorial Park, the Historic Franklin House & Gallery, and the Africatown Heritage House.
While he may consider his method to be “simple,” Charles knows the value his art holds both now and in the future.
“Once I sign it and date it, that art becomes a historical record. It means I was living during this time, in this place, and this is what I was doing. And that means something.”
