Archeologist Charles Cheek Pursues Pottery

Charles Cheek has the best of both worlds. By day, the archeologist runs an office for John Milner Associates, a historic preservation firm in Alexandria. By night, he makes stoneware at in Del Ray. He is also a juried artist at Artisans United’s craft gallery in Annandale.

“I’ve always been interested in pottery,” Cheek said. “It’s a creative process. I find it very similar to what I do when I’m looking at archeological data because you take all of these different pieces of the data and put them into a coherent whole. It’s just like taking clay and coming up with something that looks nice and fits together. You’re creating something.”

The Falls Church resident has been selling his stoneware and other functional items at Artisans United for over three years. His wife found the gallery and suggested it to him as a great place to sell his work. He said it’s provided incentive for him to produce more stoneware on a regular basis.

Cheek also works out of a teaching studio at the Clay Queen on Tuesday nights under the instruction of Renee Altman. “On Saturday, there’s an open wheel so I can go in and work for a couple of hours,” he said. Cheek has taken classes with Altman for the better part of 30 years. He took classes at her Eastern Market studio before she opened the Clay Queen in 2001.

“His archeology [background] colors some of the shapes and designs that he puts on his pots,” Altman said. “I think that’s interesting and brings another dimension to his work that a lot of other people don’t have. That part is wonderful. He’s really very good.” 

Cheek used to make bowls but has switched his focus to taller forms over the past several years. “Lately, I’ve been making vases and I’m getting pretty good at it,” he said. “I make mostly functional things and people really seem to like the bowls and vases,” he said. “I also like to make more sculptural forms but I don’t get much opportunity to do that.”

The local artist said he enjoys using a beige glaze at the Clay Queen. “It can be orange or yellow or sort of tan,” he said. “When it gets thick, it gets opalescent. I like that one a lot.”

Cheek’s interest in pottery dates back to his academic years. The New Jersey native received his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Catholic University and his master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Arizona. “It was funny,” he said. “I took an aptitude test when I started school that said I’d either be good in art or sales. I didn’t want to do sales and I didn’t know that I could do art. Now, I run an office at a business where I have to sell and I also make pottery.”

He later team-taught a course with a ceramics professor when he was teaching at the University of Tulsa. “That was fun,” he said. “He showed them how to do some glazing and I taught them how archeologists look at pottery and what kind of social and cultural information we can get from pottery.”

He then spent three years in Honduras working on a Maya site, where he was in charge of excavations in the Plaza. He moved back to Washington, D.C. in the early 1980s and started taking pottery classes at Altman’s Eastern Market studio.

Cheek hopes to set up a home studio in the near future. “When I retire, I’d like to do this more full-time and maybe set up my own kiln,” he said.