Jamais Longdon and Jennifer Snooks play Bunko during Ladies Night at Creative Escape Pottery & Mosaic.
It is late afternoon on an ordinary Thursday, an energetic brunette is busy placing crocks of paint brushes on tables. The air vibrates with creativity and the faint smell of chai latte from a Keurig machine next to the counter. Pausing, Jennifer Snook, owner of Creative Escape Pottery & Mosaic in Carmel, grins and says, “Love, love, love it!”
IT is Ladies Night, a weekly affair held at Creative Escape, a paint your own pottery studio which offers fired arts such as pottery, mosaics, glass, and silver. Thursdays at Creative Escape are “No kids, no husbands.” Customers are welcome to bring wine, as well as other food and drink.
“Ladies Night is a grown up thing,” says Snook, “The idea is for women to come in, kick-back, relax, and get a few minutes away for themselves.”
If pottery seems secondary to socializing, it is because as the mother of two lively toddlers, Snook understands Ladies Night is more than creative outlet, “Some nights we might have a group come in together to learn a technique,” says Snook, “ and sometimes women come in just to hang out and unwind and that’s fine too.”
On this Thursday night, a group of Carmel women who play Bunko together regularly, traded in their dice for glue bottles to learn about fusing glass. When asked to describe the atmosphere at Ladies Night, the words “fun, relaxed, open” crop up regularly among the diverse group of women. While Snook demonstrates how to safely cut colored glass planes into shapes, the group agreed they could choose to spend the evening in a dozen other ways, but group member Mindy Bowman summed it up with, Ladies Night at Creative Escape was time, “To be with friends. Create something. Try something new.”
At another table Anita Arnold, visiting from California, sat next to the Lilly Ollo kiln waiting for her silver jewelry to be complete, “What makes (Creative Escape) different is the variety of things you can choose to do. It isn’t all pottery, there are different things you want to try. I had never seen anything like Precious Metal Clay before today. My charm will be ready soon and I’m wearing it home.”
While delicately painting the edges of a vase, Ntianu Sababu said this was her first visit to Ladies Night, and she enjoys “the open feel of the place.”
Sitting next to her, friend Katie Price agreed with this sentiment, saying, “(Ladies Night at the Creative Escape) has a fun atmosphere where you can be creative. A place where enthusiasm is more key than how well you can paint.”
According to Snook, the embracing atmosphere draws mothers, co-eds, nuns, and nurses back week after week,“The quality of time spent here is as important to us as the piece of pottery you take home.”
Creative Escape Pottery & Mosaic is located at 1366 S. Rangeline Road, Carmel near the intersection of Carmel Drive and Rangeline Road. Ladies Night is every Thursday, 6 – 9 p.m. For more information call, 317-569-8626 or visit the website at: TheCreativeEscape.com.
