Flowers, grasses and leaves from Le Grand periodically find their way to southeast Asia.

And it is not jet stream winds that carry them.

Rather, many are carried to their destination by Emerson Process Management/Fisher Controls employees, who wish to bear gifts that represent Iowa to customers and hosts in far off lands.

The gifts are made and signed by John Devlin, a Marshalltown potter.

“Real leaves, grasses and flowers are pressed into wet clay before firing, resulting in pieces that provide new vistas each time they are admired,” said Pam Swarts, owner-operator of the The Perfect Setting, a Marshalltown gallery that exhibits and sells Devlin’s work.

He has much more time to make pottery since he retired from his position as an educator in instrumental music in the East Marshall School District.

He tried to keep his pottery skills fresh during summer breaks, he said, but it was a challenge.

There were there demands of raising a family, but also time needed to pursue his other passion – music – and earn a master’s degree from the University of Iowa.

He also was applying his music talents as an organist at Marshalltown’s Hope United Methodist Church, a position he still holds.

He took a 10-year hiatus from pottery and then retirement eight years ago allowed him the time and opportunity to get back into the craft with gusto.

Devlin’s skills began and matured originally in Estes Park, Colo. in the 1960s, where Devlin’s late mother, a professional ceramist, taught her children the art of pottery.

His mother would send Devlin and siblings out into the woods to find the flowers, leaves and grasses in the woods needed.

Devlin said Iowa leaves and grasses are a lot different from those found in Colorado.

“I’ve enlarged on what my mother did,” he said. “I do it a little differently.”

Devlin said his mother’s so skilled that she quickly transferred from hobby to vocation, when his father took ill, couldn’t work and the family depended on his mother’s pottery-generated income.

“Mom was able to keep our home and raise a family with her art” he said.

It was not easy early on, as his mother experimented with a variety of products such as stationary, until she found her niche pressing grasses and flowers into clay.

He also credits his mother with another talent – the skill to teach her children what she knew.

A brother and sister learned the craft and were successful at it too.

Another woman is central to Devlin’s art, his wife Carole, who has supported all of his endeavors over the years and who assists with firing and glazing the pottery pieces.

He also singled out with high praise the late Larry Hagstrand, a Marshalltown educator and artist who encouraged Devlin to display and sell his wares at area art fairs.

And just as his late mother worked to find a market to sell her pottery, Devlin has found the contemporary market interesting, challenging and full of opportunity.

Local, regional and national shows are many, he said, with success in sales resulting from finding the right one at the best time.

Swarts complimented him for his recent success at a prestigious New York City art fair.

Acceptance into the juried event was but half the battle.

Selling one’s goods is the other, and Devlin was extremely pleased with the results.

“I made back the substantial show admission fee and my trip expenses the first day,” he said.

Devlin continues to make pottery because he likes the immediate feedback received from customers and others who either like or dislike his art versus some of the challenges he encountered as a veteran educator.

“Because when you teach school, there are a lot of pressures, you have administrators and parents that are all after you … I think every teacher experiences that, and there is not as much positive feedback in that,” he said, “and that can wear on a person.”

He contrasted it with the world of art fairs.

“In the summer when I went to art fairs, why if the people don’t like what you have, they walk on by and don’t say anything, but if they do like it, they come and they tell you. They are very complimentary and positive and then they get thier wallets out and that is nice too.”