Turner House began long before it had a name.
Kim was first introduced to clay in the late 1960s and early 1970s, tagging along with his mother as she taught community art classes throughout Baldwin County, Georgia. Those early years were less about instruction and more about exposure, watching, experimenting, and learning what clay could become.
What began as curiosity slowly turned into something deeper. A wheel, a shed behind a country store, long hours at the wheel - the foundation was laid early.
Turner House is the continuation of that story.
A Childhood in Clay
Kim was first introduced to clay in the late 1960s and early 1970s, often tagging along with his mother as she taught community art classes throughout Baldwin County, Georgia. Her work centered on folk art,figurines, vessels, and handmade objects rooted in tradition. Those early years were spent watching, experimenting, and getting curious about what clay could become.
“I loved making funny looking stuff,” he remembers. “Old people, clown faces, chickens or something crazy, just trying to get people’s attention.”
His mother also owned The Old Country Store, a small shop filled with antiques and handmade goods. In 1976, when Kim was twelve, one of the store’s suppliers introduced him to the work of potter Wade Franklin. Watching raw earth take form on the wheel left a mark.
Franklin gave Kim his first lesson and sold him a used wheel. That winter, he taught himself to throw. First on the porch of the old farmhouse, then inside the kitchen, where clay quickly spread everywhere. By spring, he had moved into a small shed behind the country store. It had a dirt floor, a tin roof that leaked, and very little insulation, but it was his.
“It wasn’t much,” he says, “but it was my first place.”
Learning to Make and Sell
As a teenager, Kim traveled with his mother to pottery hubs like Gillsville, Georgia, where she sourced work for the country store. While she shopped, he watched potters work, learning techniques simply by observing, studying forms, and paying attention to how seasoned makers moved at the wheel.
By sixteen, he was selling his own pieces at arts and crafts festivals, setting up booths and learning firsthand what it meant to make and sell work.
“I didn’t really know any better,” he says. “I grew up with my mom teaching me to be innovative and to do what you want and keep doing it until you get it right.”
Those early years taught him something beyond technique. They taught him independence, how to build something from nothing, and how to stand behind it.
The Barn and the Fire
After high school, Kim attended the Penland School of Craft for a summer semester, studying under a dozen different potters. There, he expanded his technical knowledge learning salt firing, gas reduction, and wood firing. deepening both his skill and his understanding of the material.
When he returned home, Betty Snider, Director of Allied Arts of Milledgeville, hosted a one-man exhibition of his work at the historic John Marlor House. Around this time, Kim built a new studio in an old dairy barn on the family farm, installing multiple electric kilns and later constructing a wood-fired kiln with a fellow potter. Firings were infrequent, often just once a month, requiring weeks of preparation, wood, and energy to fill.
Though pottery remained central, it was not the only work sustaining him. He painted houses, built power lines, worked the farm - whatever was necessary to keep going.
“It was sun up to sun down,” he says. “You did what you had to do.”
Starting Over
In the 1980s, Kim apprenticed under master potter Charles Counts in Rising Fawn, Georgia, an experience that reshaped his understanding of discipline and craft.
“You’re told you don’t know how to throw,” he says. “You throw out everything you learned and start over. You do it his way.”
Days were long and physical wedging clay, mixing glazes, preparing kilns, glazing Counts’ work before touching his own. If there was time, he earned an hour for his own pieces.
The apprenticeship demanded humility. It stripped the work back to fundamentals and rebuilt it with intention.
On the Road
After his apprenticeship, Kim continued making and selling work steadily. Dealers began purchasing wholesale from the country store, then visiting the barn studio itself. The public followed, and the studio became a place where people could see the work being made and purchase pieces directly.
By the mid-1990s, he was married and raising children. The family traveled across Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and beyond, often packed into a van stacked with pottery, selling work to galleries and collectors.
Their youngest son became an unexpected marketing tool. “We’d send him in first holding a few pieces,” Kim laughs. “He was a cute little blonde kid in overalls. It worked almost every time.”
As eBay emerged, Kim adapted quickly — photographing work with disposable cameras, scanning images, and eventually building out multiple computers just to keep up with demand. Much of the work during this period centered on folk art, particularly face jugs, which found a wide audience.
The Return
In 2001, the family moved west, seeking new opportunities and a different pace of life. They sold nearly everything, packed a U-Haul, and relocated to Lake Arrowhead, California. Kim brought a wheel and kiln with him, continuing to make and ship work while adjusting to a new chapter.
But by 2003, the pace had caught up with him. The cost of living was higher, his children were growing, and priorities shifted. He put pottery on pause and began working full-time in construction.
For nearly twenty years, the wheel stayed quiet.
“I always said I’d get back to it,” he says. “But life kept moving. Kids, grandkids, responsibilities. It was easy to keep putting that part of my life off.”
Eventually, the absence became harder to ignore.
“I felt like there was an emptiness,” he says. “I knew I was put here to do this. It just felt like the right time.”
He found studio space in Newport Beach and returned to the wheel slowly, deliberately. For months, he worked without pressure, experimenting with forms and glazes, allowing the process to guide the work rather than forcing outcomes.
“My creativity feels better now,” he says. “It’s changed.”