Every morning, Shazieh Gorji starts her day by pulling a tarot card before walking through the shade of her garden oasis — past spirals of stones and scatterings of seashells — to her home ceramics studio.
Gorji, the Tucson artist behind Agave Pantry, has a love for both ceramics and baking, and creates beautiful handmade pottery as well as culinary delights.
Shazieh Gorji, of Agave Pantry, uses a slab roller to flatten out a piece of clay at her home studio on May 7. Gorji is a ceramist, baker and creates spice blends.
“I'm essentially a potter and a baker,” Gorji said. “I call it kiln baked and oven baked.”
In her kitchen, she cooks up Persian love cakes, sweet caramels with chai and lavender flavorings, and a few other delicacies.
“I make salt and sugar blends as well,” she said. “They've got little flavor pairing cards to suggest flavor pairings. So a rosemary, earthy salt, you would use on root vegetables, not on zucchini. The lavender salt is nice on zucchini or pineapple or shrimp.”
Her main focus, though, Gorji said, has been functional pottery to enhance everyday life. There’s bowls and plates and mugs, of course, with rich, earthy colors and an elevated rustic feel, but her ceramics also expand into the spiritual.
“I do altar tools and altar parts that are functional in their own way, but not to eat out of,” she said. “Those are my food for the soul items.”
Shazieh Gorji, of Agave Pantry, turns a piece of clay over after flattening it at her home studio on May 7.
Dream pots, wishing pots, affirmation pots, Gorji makes them all, and will even help you create your own at one of her workshops.
“I love doing them,” she said.
After more than 20 years of working with clay, Gorji still finds things to love about ceramics, and what started as a challenge to try something out of her comfort zone has become her passion.
Gorji first stepped into the world of ceramics as an international student from Pakistan, studying at Bennington College in Vermont. She said she took her first clay class not out of pre-existing interest or desire to learn ceramics, but because it intimidated her.
“My advisor said to me, ‘what do you want to do?’ and I said, ‘I don't know,’ and she said, ‘why don't you take a class with something that terrifies you that you'd never do? What would you never take?’ And I (thought), ‘I’d never take a clay class.’”
What scared her, Gorji said, was having to decide what to create with the clay.
Shazieh Gorji, of Agave Pantry, works on her wheel to make a spirit pot at her home studio on May 7.
“I didn't know what to make with it,” Gorji said. “I (thought), ‘there's this lump of clay. What do you do with it?’”
Now, Gorji says the limitless creative potential of clay is what she loves most about making ceramics.
“There's so many possibilities with clay. It's alive. It becomes something that it wants to be with your assistance, but also it has memory. If you're making a slab and you bend it and then try to flatten it again in the kiln, it will bend again at some point,” she said. “There's no end to the possibilities, right? Which makes it really exciting.”
She also likes the transformative nature of the process, putting clay through the fire to turn it into stone.
“There's a chemistry, without getting too sciency,” she said.
In creating her pottery and ceramic pieces, Gorji said she finds much of her inspiration in her surroundings.
“Over time, it's been wherever I've been,” she said. “As you keep moving around, you get inspired by what's around you.”
At times, Gorji said she has incorporated elements of the sea and mountains of her native Pakistan. Now, though, her biggest influence is the desert of Arizona.
The colors she uses also change throughout the year, reflecting the weather of the season.
“Often in the winter, it's more earthy, and in the summer, I start using more white juxtaposed with aquamarine glazes, to have something fresher and lighter in this heat.”
Currently, you can find Gorji’s work at Canyon Ranch's gift shop, Esteban's in Sedona and a few local shops around town, including Sonoran House Sam Hughes, the Coronet Cafe, Tohono Chul, Tucson Botanical Gardens and Pop Cycle, Gorji said.
Shazieh Gorji, of Agave Pantry, works on her wheel to make a spirit pot at her home studio on May 7.
She is also currently working with Ursa to make custom ceramics for the restaurant.
“I really enjoy the conversation that takes place to come up with a design or idea,” Gorji said. “I'll make him plates, bowls, cups, little sipping cups, items for the bar. It's a potter's dream.”
Her next collaboration will be in June, with Sonoran Rosie and Arizona Poppy Shop.
“She makes wonderful incense, everyone loves it. So I’ll have my students make incense burners. I'm gonna pair her incense with the incense burners, and they'll make the incense burner and get to take a bundle of incense.”
As her business grows, Gorji said she hopes for Agave Pantry to continue to be a creative community space where people can buy handmade work, slow down, connect and experience the art of making together.
She is also looking to expand her workshops and collaborations, especially her hand-building classes, mini altar workshops, and spirit pot and pit-firing experiences.
“My future plans are really about fostering connection,” Gorji said. “Connection to handmade objects, to creativity, to ritual.”
Shazieh Gorji, of Agave Pantry, works on her wheel to make a spirit pot at her home studio on May 7.
