Page 32 - South Mississippi Living - April, 2019

PEOPLE coast character
32 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • April 2019 FOR MORE REFLECTIONS OF THE GULF COAST >> www.smliving.net
F
THE COAST’S
MAD POTTER
story by Jeff Clark photos courtesy of Steve Barney
LIVES
or Steve Barney of Bay St. Louis, it all started with a trip to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
“We would come down for Jazz Fest from my native New England and I would go exploring the area within a two-hour or so radius,” Barney said. “On one trip, I went and checked out Bay St. Louis and I absolutely loved it. It was coastal and artsy and funky; I fell in love with it. So, I bought some land here after Hurricane Katrina to build
a vacation home and in 2013 I left Boston and moved to the Bay.”
The move for Barney, who began spinning
the pottery wheel when he was a young child, was one that was both fulfilling and rewarding, especially for commitment to the art of pottery. “I’m currently the president of The Arts Hancock County,” he said. “As P.T. Barnum once said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ and I was the sucker who complained about the leadership vacuum. I wasn’t even on the board at this
time and the organization entrusted me with
this stewardship of leading The Arts Hancock County. I love it, but it’s a tremendous amount of volunteer effort. In addition to promoting the arts in Hancock County, it’s also giving me much
more visibility for my work and for the issues I’m trying to advocate, it’s been a fantastic thing.”
Barney’s love for pottery began when he was eight or nine years old. It’s always been a hobby that has made a perfect companion for his engineering background and his advocacy for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. “I’ve been able to apply my analytic skills and engineering mindset to