Reggie Pointer: Bringing it All Together

September 04, 2026

Reggie Pointer: Bringing it All Together

 

For Reggie Pointer, it’s all about the connections.  This Coordinator of Ceramics and Sculpture at Howard University bases his art and teaching on the vital importance of communication and collaboration, stretching the boundaries of ceramic art.  From childhood evenings at the family card table, to the challenge of a high school mentor, to guiding a student at the wheel, Pointer knows the importance of “eye-to-eye/face-to-face” communication.  By making moments of connection through clay, Pointer hopes to “create something grand” that surpasses the material.

 

“From the beginning, art really wasn’t a thing,” says Pointer.  “I was all about numbers, math, and chess.  Chess was my thing.”  As a young child growing up in the Washington, DC area, Pointer enjoyed playing games with his family most evenings.  He recalls the close connections and relationships that developed around the table.  He was drawn to the tactile sense, the rolling of dice, the moving of tokens.  When, at the age of 11, he lost both parents and was sent to live with relatives in rural Massachusetts, chess was his anchor.  “Even today,” he says, “I never turn down a game.”

 

In high school art class, Pointer began to develop his talent for graphic arts and cartooning.  But as graduation approached, he planned to study accounting, drawing on his logical, math-centered brain.  His art teacher had other ideas.  “She saw something in me,” he explains.  “She took me to lunch, told me she had set up an appointment for me to interview at the Howard University Art department, helped me put together a portfolio, and drove me to the interview with the chairperson, Starmanda Bullock, who liked my work.  She encouraged me to apply and said I might even get a scholarship.”  This was a seminal experience for Pointer, that solidified his commitment to creating personal connections.

 

Pointer was accepted and enrolled at Howard, planning to study graphic arts.  He had very little experience in clay but was required to take an introductory course.  “This course,” he says, “was taught by Winnie Owen-Hart and everyone said not to take it because she had a reputation for being very tough.  I enrolled and was thrilled to learn that Winnie wouldn’t be teaching it that term.  Instead, Martha Jackson Jarvis taught it.”  Jarvis must have sparked something in Pointer, because he took a second clay class, this time from Owen-Hart, who lived up to her reputation.  “She had us throwing LOTS of stuff,” Pointer recalls, “but it galvanized my love of the wheel.  I saw in it the ability to have fun, to watch the pots grow.”  Pointer relates a story about how he came to acquire his “mark.”  After throwing thirty or so bowls in the studio one day, he took a break to pick up a snack at a local health food store.  He was chatting with a fellow customer, whose name was Yazid, and Pointer commented on its uniqueness.  Yazid explained that it meant “ever-increasing” in his language.  Pointer returned to the studio and marked “Yazid” on the bottom of all his bowls, a mark that he uses to this day.

 

Pointer still was not convinced that ceramics was a good choice.  “I had this feeling that it was sort of a ‘girly’ thing,” he says, “and that you can’t make any money in it.”  Owen-Hart challenged him, daring him to do a pop-up sale of his pots on campus.  “I made $300 in two hours!” he exclaims.  “I took more classes, fell into that clay bucket, and haven’t gotten out of it since.”

 

Pointer’s early teaching experiences convinced him of the importance of making one-on-one connections with his students.  At a summer job position teaching ceramics at a rec center, his students ranged from preschoolers to neighborhood kids, to troubled youth.  “I dealt with a screaming toddler by flying him around the room and plopping him in his seat,” he recalls, “and with an aggressive teenager by removing him to the hall, showing a bit of my own aggression and re-connecting over a sport team he favored.”  Later, after college, he taught exceptional needs adults with a range of problems at The Exceptional Children’s Foundation in California.  “It was my most enjoyable teaching experience, “he says.  “I looked at what they were able to do and then helped them find a way to make it work.”

 

Pointer earned an MFA at Florida State University and taught at Grambling State University in Louisiana for six years before he took a position back at Howard University in 2001.  The ceramic program is small but persistent.  Pointer faces the same resistance he brought as a student.  “So many of the undergrads think they can’t make money in clay and gravitate to fashion design, photography, and animation,” he says.  Nevertheless, he recruits students for the graduate program with success.  “There aren’t as many as I’d like, but there are enough to keep it going,” he says.

     

Pointer finds his own artistic expression in creating games that utilize clay.  He uses his Clay Bingo game in his classes.  The object is to spell CLAY and the pieces are made of clay.  The winners must say what they have learned about clay and receive an incentive for doing so.  Pointer says, “I try to make students see that everything you make is an experiment.  If you make it again, it will be different.  Even the thing that you messed up – there is a place for it.”  Pointer reinforces encouragement with his Round 2 Its, which are coin-shaped clay discs imprinted with the words “round 2 it.”  “I give them to people to encourage them to do something – to get around to it.  I put them in random places at the NCECA conferences for a few years,” he explains.  He also leaves ceramic hearts in natural places, seeking to connect to people remotely and randomly over nature.  Pointer says, “My happy and my joy comes from making a cup for someone to use.  I have a large collection of others’ cups and every so often, I’ll pull one from the shelf and have a cup of coffee with that artist in my mind.”

 

Pointer has created other games – a board game called Blood, Flesh, and Bone that is similar to Monopoly.  Instead of real estate, players accumulate studios and galleries; the money is glaze ingredients and clays.  At a workshop at the Penland School of Crafts he introduced a new game each day, including a cork pool table with solid porcelain balls and a few “surprise” ones that were hollow and designed to break.  “Games,” he says, “put us together – face to face and eye to eye.”  Pointer, of course, has made numerous clay chess sets.

 

Pointer says, “I am tactile,” when asked about his digital presence.  His interactions are concrete and real, even if they are remote, through a found ceramic item or the use of a colleague’s ceramic cup.  He has a project that incorporates both clay and graphic design that is leading him to a greater online presence.  His Clay Heroes Zine is a drawn cartoon series featuring characters who live in a clay world.  In one episode, Stoneware Man, Earthenware Lad, and Porcelain Lady debate whether there is a place for the robot, AD4U, in their world because it is made of Air-Dry clay.  Pointer distributes issues of the zine at NCECA conferences.  Many friends have urged him to make it digital, though Pointer says he likes to hold something in his hand.  Nevertheless, we may see this series on Instagram soon.

 

Reggie Pointer is an enigmatic mix of left brain and right brain who exudes the joy of childhood play and the joy of closeness with others.  He leaves us with this delightful poem:

 

That Clay

I think that I will never see,

A poem as lovely as Pottery

Merge of fire, earth, water, and hand,

The true magic of Ceramics

You should now clearly understand.

 

It’s muddled, it’s messy, somehow still grand,

Just add two or more ingredients to some silica sand.

You’ll be making a glaze

to cover that pot,

Fired in some kind of kiln.

Be careful when touching it

It could still be hot.

 

Visit Reggie Pointer on Instagram @rwpointer