Balentine credits her mother with teaching her an appreciation for art and encouraging her to express herself creatively through drawing and painting. Balentine took her passion for art to Western Carolina University, where she discovered pottery and earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree. However, soon after graduating, Balentine decided she needed to lay her creative ambitions aside in order to raise her children.

“It’s kind of like putting your life on hold,” Balentine said. “I don’t regret those years raising the kids. I needed that time with them. It would have been too hard to get started up while they were little.”

However, 10 years ago, with her three sons approaching adulthood and encouragement from her mother and a pottery instructor at Haywood Community College, Balentine decided to pursue the life of a full-time potter. She went through the production pottery program at HCC, was accepted into the Southern Highlands Craft Guild, and began to build her studio in the basement of her home.

“My goal was to make enough to put my three sons through college and I have managed to do that,” Balentine said.

One look at her work, and it is easy to understand Balentine’s success. A lot of her designs, particularly her goblets and oil lamps, have a slender, yet proportionate appearance. The stems of her goblets are nearly 10 inches tall, yet are less than inch in diameter at their narrowest point. It is this delicate design that sets her work apart.

“It gets real difficult to get that long and narrow, because it’s hard to keep the clay from collapsing,” Balentine said. “A lot of potters don’t have the patience to do that and I probably spend too much time on it, but I like the way it turns out.”

Balentine’s glazes, which she mixes herself, are also distinctive. She uses a gas reduction kiln that gives the glazes and the colors they produce a depth and richness that can’t be achieved with electric kilns. She also employs a technique known as wax resist that allows her to paint detailed representations of, as her business’s name suggests, the plants and flowers that abound in Western North Carolina.

In the ten years she has been in operation, Balentine has built a steady and loyal clientele that buys everything she produces — a lot considering she fires more than 200 pieces in the kiln every three weeks.

While her pieces are definitely art, Balentine is quick to emphasize that they are as functional as they are beautiful and it is the utility that her customers get from her works that she enjoys most.

“The best compliment I can get as a potter is to have someone call up and say I am enjoying using that coffee mug,” Balentine said. “Don’t tell me you have it in your curio.”

Balentine’s work can be found at any of the Southern Highland Craft Guild shops including Alland Stand at the Folk Art Center in Asheville, Arrow Crafts in Gatlinburg, and Parkway crafts in Blowing Rock as well as Different Drummer Pottery in Maggie Valley. In addition, Balentine will hold a holiday open house Dec. 2 and 3, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at her studio on 274 Calhoun Road in Waynesville.