Retirement can lead to a lot of things: relaxation, restlessness, an opportunity to catch up with family life or, if you’re Brett Favre, the chance to announce another comeback.
For Milton resident Wes Stack, retirement opened the door to a new passion in life – pottery.

After a career in education and technology, Stack took pottery and ceramics workshops at the Rehoboth Art League in 2001. From there, pottery has turned into an almost full-time hobby. Ironic, considering he’d never really been into art before.

“I did a little bit of steel sculpture, model steel. And a little bit of wood carving. But not too much. I was too busy with my professional career,” he said.

The art of pottery looks simple, but looks are deceiving. First, the potter molds the clay on a wheel. This is the difficult part, as the potter must keep the clay from flying off the wheel. The molded clay is dried and fired in a kiln. The potter can then apply glaze for color and then fire the pot again.

For Stack, there are no limits to what the art form will allow him to do.

“There are different aspects to ceramics – it’s infinite the possibilities. When I first started, I started on the wheel, and I wasn’t very good at it, as most people aren’t,” he said. “At the art league, for the most part, they fire to Cone 6, which is the temperature at which a cone bends over. That’s about 2,200 degrees.”

After a few years, he started looking at other aspects of pottery, such as raku firing, a process Stack has been experimenting with for five years.

“It’s a relatively low-firing, about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, but it has different qualities to it,” Stack said. “You use metallic-based glazes and you get these kind of iridescent colors. I started doing that and got more and more excited about that. It’s a real exciting process in the sense that you take your piece that has been bisque fired first and then glazed with metallic glazes. You pop it out when it’s red hot, put it in another container that has combustibles; I use straw for the most part. That has the effect of pulling the oxygen out of the glaze.”

He said his favorite piece is a raku-fired plate that fittingly, has top position on a shelf in his living room. “I just like the shape of it. It was one of my first, best pieces,” Stack said. “I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted it to look like, and it came out just that way.”

Stack said he likes to experiment with glazes, firing styles and double-dipping pots. Much of Stack’s work can be seen at his home, in both decorative pieces and usable foodwares. He also built his own kiln in the back yard by welding extruded aluminum into a circle and lining it with mineral wool. Stack said it took about a day or so to make the kiln.

Stack recently put his pottery work to charitable use, participating in the Empty Bowls project, which helped raise money for Jusst Sooup Ministry. He was one of four potters participating in the project, along with Carmela Coleman, Jeff Stickle and Eddie Finmyr.

“We had started making cups at the art league for that purpose, to donate the money to a needy cause,” Stack said. “Then Pat Coluzzi, the head of the farmers market, came to Karen McGrath and Diane Pirkey and proposed this Empty Bowls project. We made close to 110 bowls. The combined profits from the two endeavors, I think, amounted to $2,400 for Jusst Sooup. It was labor well spent.”

Before entering the art world, Stack was formerly a technology supervisor with the Milford School District, teaching teachers how to use the latest in technology. A native Delawarean, he’s from Seaford originally,

Stack was also a teacher and a soldier, having served two years in the Army, including a stint in Vietnam in the First Cavalry.

Now, however, he keeps himself busy with shows of his work, including one this past weekend at the Lewes Historical Society Arts and Crafts Show.

“It’s a lot of work,” Stack said. “It takes a day out of the process for me; I’d rather be throwing. But, I do them because you need an outlet for your work or it piles up.”

Besides the art league and local craft shows, Stack’s work can also be found at Details and Gallery One. While his pottery started as a hobby that grew into something bigger, Stack said his work in technology did leave him uniquely prepared for pot making.

“Technology requires a lot of patience, and it requires a lot of focus. It also is almost inexhaustible in terms of the possibilities. It’s kind of parallel in a way, but the pottery is much more visual,” Stack said.