About six miles east of Dolores on Colorado Highway 145, colorful flags and banners swing from a large orange mail box. This is the unusual store entrance to the Sloppy Potter where Pat Kantor builds and sells brightly colored claycraft.

Kantor’s pottery, which comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and designs, has all been crafted by hand. Kantor does not use a potter’s wheel. She prefers to create unique cups, bowls, plates and other functional pottery, as well as wall hangings and sculpture with strips and coils of clay.

"I like color. I like fun," Kantor explained about her extraordinary style. "I like things that I like to look at."

She continued by saying that some of her art is a spontaneous extension of other pieces. "If I have leftover strips," she said, "I like to do funky stuff."

Some of that "funky stuff" includes making a leaning vase with multi-colored strips, and doctoring a cracked dish with a clay Band-Aid.

Kantor studied pottery in Sedona, Arizona, where she and her husband lived for 22 years. She began her studies on the pottery wheel, but soon discovered building. Kantor said that she immediately fell in love with constucting art by hand, a discovery that she jokingly attributes to her mother. "My mother never let me play in the dirt," she said with a laugh.

The Sloppy Potter is located at 19856 Highway 145. Kantor said, "You can’t miss the orange mailbox."