Potter, Sound Artist and Co-Founder Sayge Carroll Is Building a Sanctuary for Creatives at Mudluk Pottery

In the latest episode of On the Radar, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder’s series highlighting Black Minnesota creatives, host Damenica Ellis sat down with Sayge Carroll, potter, sound artist and co-founder of Mudluk Pottery Studio in South Minneapolis, to talk about her journey through photography and ceramics, the philosophy behind Mudluk, and what she is building next.

A South Minneapolis Creative From the Start

Carroll was born and raised in South Minneapolis and has been making art in some form since she graduated from high school. She started with photography, introduced to the craft through her father’s SLR camera, which he let her use as a teenager after struggling to figure it out himself.

“Having a camera with me allowed me to go to different places and feel like I had a purpose to be there,” she said.

She taught herself darkroom techniques with the help of a friend and eventually built her own darkroom in a bathroom, blacking out the window, laying pans in the bathtub, and making it work with what she had. She later studied photography at Howard University under Professor Braithwaite.

As photography shifted to digital in the early 2000s and the demand for fast turnaround grew, Carroll found herself drifting away from the medium. After having her son in 2005, she returned to pottery, a practice she had briefly explored right after high school. It felt like coming home.

“You couldn’t tell me my pottery was bad,” she said. “It was something I understood. It was something I felt like I could control.”

Clay as a Calling

Carroll describes clay as a medium that has consistently shown up for her, often through the generosity of others. A friend gifted her a kiln and a wheel. She built a studio in her basement. She started the ceramics program at Juxta in 2018. Along the way, she noticed how much gatekeeping existed in the ceramics world, from the way techniques were taught to the myths passed down in classrooms.

One of the most persistent myths, she said, is that pieces explode in the kiln because of air pockets. The real culprit, she explained, is moisture that has not fully dried before firing.

“If the piece is not dry, what happens is the water starts to get past the boiling point and it starts to boil in the clay,” she said. “That’s going to break a piece.”

For Carroll, these kinds of withheld truths are part of a broader pattern of gatekeeping in the arts that she has made it her mission to push back against.

Mudluk Pottery: A Studio and Sanctuary

In 2022, Carroll co-founded Mudluk Pottery Studio alongside Katrina Knutson and Keegan Savi, two collaborators she had been working with for years through a shared art collective. Together, the three knew that having their own building would allow them to stop pitching their ideas to others and bring their vision for accessible, community-centered arts programming to life.

Mudluk is located at 2829 Bloomington Ave. in South Minneapolis and describes itself as both a studio and a sanctuary. Carroll says the sanctuary aspect is not just a marketing word.

“It’s a safe place where you don’t have to produce anything, perform, or be performative in the way that you show up,” she said. “You can just be yourself and be accepted.”

The studio keeps its space warm and inviting, literally, with a sunset orange classroom that Carroll chose herself. But the deeper sense of safety comes from how the staff and members tend to one another, how questions are asked genuinely, and how people are given permission to be beginners without shame.

“Being okay at being a baby at something is important,” she said. “When you are just learning something, you shouldn’t expect to be amazing at it.”

Programs Built for Access

Accessibility is central to everything Mudluk does. The studio recycles clay, pursues grants and scholarships, and has historically offered a BIPOC Residency, a three-month membership that gave participants unlimited clay, firings and glazes regardless of where they were in their creative journey.

The studio is now evolving that program into 12-week classes offered twice a year, structured in four-week intervals so participants can take one session to try it or commit to all three to build real skill.

The Melanated Meetup, another Mudluk program, provides a dedicated space specifically for Black, Indigenous and people of color to connect and create together.

“In Minnesota, I was often the only person of color in a space,” Carroll said. “It is really nice to feel like you don’t have to worry about a weird comment, a microaggression coming at you. You just get to sit back and let that guard down.”

Last January, the Mudluk gallery officially became a nonprofit, opening up new possibilities for programming and funding.

What Is Coming Next

Mudluk is in the process of moving to a larger space that will feature two classrooms, a dedicated gallery, and room for textile and photography programming in addition to ceramics. Construction is underway and the timeline will be shared with the community as it develops.

This summer, Carroll and the Mudluk team will be at Juneteenth for Soul of the South Side, bringing their newly donated mud bus, a van converted into a mobile ceramics demo space, where attendees can try their hand at throwing and possibly witness Raku firings.

Summer camps are also running from mid-June through the end of July, with six-week sessions and scholarships still available.

Advice for Aspiring Artists

Carroll’s biggest piece of advice for emerging artists was simple and direct.

“Do it anyway, with or without the grant,” she said. “If there’s something that you want to do, do it. If you can figure out how to make your idea happen, you’ll start having a track record of being able to produce these things, and then the grants will start coming as well.”

She also pointed to her darkroom-in-a-bathroom story as proof that limitations are rarely as fixed as they seem.

“Even if you feel like you don’t have the means to do it, you do,” she said. “That creative problem solving will follow you through your life and help you with so many different things.”

How to Connect

Visit Mudluk Pottery at 2829 Bloomington Ave., South Minneapolis, or online at mudlukpottery.com. Follow the studio on Instagram at @mudluk_pottery.

To nominate a Black Minnesota creative for a future episode of On the Radar, visit our nomination page.