These days, the Star City is home to a wide array of entrepreneurs, creatives and community-builders from around the world … and right down the road. In each installment of our blog series, you’ll meet a new face who’ll share their spin on the Roanoke Valley – their favorite places to eat, drink, connect or get inspired. In this installment, we talked to local potter Isha Devine.
Ashley Fellers
Isha Devine
As autumn mornings turn crisp and cool, you might find yourself longing to start your days with a steaming cup of coffee, your palms curled around a hand-thrown clay mug.
If that’s you, you need to meet Isha Devine. The potter has been a hit at the Grandin Village Farmer’s Market this year, where she sells her brightly colored coffee mugs, hand-sculpted clay mushrooms and gleaming pasta bowls each week.
But the irony is that, just a few years ago, Isha would never have imagined herself working with clay full-time. A longtime portrait painter, she previously paid the bills by painting faces – literally – and applying henna tattoos at parties. In 2019, though, she took a pottery-throwing course just for fun, and she was instantly hooked.
“There’s something about this medium that’s so physical and not in your head, unlike painting,” she says. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of the flow state? I definitely think that pottery kind of forces you to get into that headspace in a different way than other forms of art, because your mind and body have to be doing one thing, together. You can’t really be upset.”
Ashley Fellers
Isha Devine pottery
Maybe that’s why, when the pandemic pressed pause on her face-painting business, she decided to spend her lockdown days mastering her favorite new craft… which has since become a dream job.
“I don’t know that I would have settled on pottery like this if it hadn’t been for the circumstances,” she admits, “but now I’m glad that I did. I think it’s my calling.”
Want to learn more about this artsy Roanoker’s favorite places to eat, drink and find inspiration for her work? Here’s what she shared …
Q: I think we’re all looking forward to returning to our favorite restaurants. What are yours?
ID: I have celiac disease, so it’s actually been a problem for years that Roanoke doesn’t have many places I can eat, but I just recently found out that Taaza is really good at that. They only have two things that contain gluten!
[And] I encourage people to go to the Grandin Village Farmer’s Market. They do a good job of having different types of food for different dietary restrictions. Surprisingly, Blacksburg Bagel actually makes really good gluten-free bread and really good gluten-free pizza dough. Those are my staples now … They use actual sourdough starter, so it tastes like real food!
Q: How about a favorite place for a drink (whatever “drink” means to you)?
ID: I love going to Little Green Hive. I live in the Grandin neighborhood, so I love their little outdoor seating area; I’ll go sit there with my girlfriends … The other one is Morning Brew Coffee in the Taubman. They’ve got that nice outdoor seating, too.
Q: How about arts and music venues or community meeting spaces? Are there any you’re excited to visit again when you feel safe to do so?
ID: Places and things I’ve missed doing the most is going to Art by Night and visiting all the galleries on Friday nights… and I really missed the Brambleton Center. They’re such an asset to our community, and they’ve started doing some things again; a lot of their outdoor programs have resumed… They offer so much cool stuff!
Q: Where do you go to find inspiration for your work?
ID: I love pattern, so I love walking downtown and looking at the architecture, all the ornate brick designs that are on the tops of the buildings … I just wander. The Market Building has some beautiful brickwork on it. La De Da is a good source of inspiration, just because they have so many colors and patterns and such rich atmosphere there. The window displays are always gorgeous.
Q: Do you have any favorite outdoor spots?
ID: I love walking on the Greenway. My favorite place to go is if you get on the trailhead that’s beneath the Memorial {Avenue} Bridge, and walk on that stretch, there’s a blue heron that lives there. I take the dogs there about once a week or so… [And] I love Garst Mill Park and Fishburn Park.
Q: Can you think of any best-kept secrets in our city ... places other readers may not have discovered yet?
ID: I don’t think it’s really a secret, because it just opened up, but I don’t think a lot of people have heard of Gatewood Rose Botanicals yet. And that’s a destination that everyone should make it to … I’m selling my mushrooms there, and I’ve bought a few plants. It’s really gorgeous.
Q: Are there any entrepreneurs, creatives or community-builders in Roanoke who inspire you?
ID: Toya Jones [of Morning Brew Coffee Company and the Avocado Food Truck] is amazing. She’s starting a new venture I wanted to highlight called Verses, which is going to be her teaming up with Soul Sessions to have a slam poetry venue where they also have coffee and stuff. I think it’s going to be amazing!
… Another artist that you should keep your eye on is Maggie Perrin Key. She’s fabulous… She’s always making cool murals, and she just started a new venture called Play. Play is going to be a different page, separate from her painting page, about things that she makes – her totes and her silk scarves and all of the gifty-type things that she sells… [Her work is] immersive; it’s definitely the kind of work where you can feel the airspace.
Q: What’s keeping you encouraged right now?
ID: I love thinking that there are people all over the country that wake up and drink out of my coffee cups … It’s wild.
To keep up with Isha’s latest work and find her latest pop-ups, follow her on Instagram.
Stay tuned for our next installment of Roanoke According To …
About the Writer:
Ashley Wilson Fellers is a writer, educator, self-taught painter and contemplative photographer in Roanoke, Virginia. When she isn’t teaching writing at Virginia Western, she snaps photos of sidewalk cracks, rescues wet leaves from windshield wipers and leaves poems hidden under park benches. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Tech.