WOODSTOCK — When Monica Mann left her job at Wells Wood Turning in Buckfield this spring, her co-workers presented her with an unusual retirement gift: a brick of pottery clay.

Although she had been working in the wood products industry for the past five years, Mann was about to return to her studio to resume her lifelong artistic passion of creating with clay.

In fact, it was pottery that first drew her to Woodstock, the place she has called home for more than 30 years.

A native of Baltimore who describes herself as “a city slicker gone to seed,” she had found her way to Maine and was living in Aroostook County in 1984 when she learned of an opportunity to apprentice at Frieden Dorf Pottery in Bryant Pond.

It was October, foliage season in western Maine. As she drove down the hill into the village, Mann felt immediately that she was coming home.

“I decided this was the place I wanted to be,” she said.

She eventually purchased a 1.5-acre field on Road Less Traveled, and built her own home there “with a lot of help from friends.”

The house was the first dwelling to be built as part of a Community Concepts housing replacement pilot project. The program paid for the materials and required future homeowners to commit a year of weekend labor to the project.

Mann built herself a pottery studio on the property, planted a big garden, and raised her son and daughter there.

For 20 years, she ran Earth and Fire Pottery, selling most of her work wholesale. In order to make ends meet, she took outside jobs when needed, working in her studio in the evenings and on days off.

Her signature line of pottery is both useful and whimsical, featuring a playful three-dimensional moose head. She also makes pieces adorned with fanciful elfin-looking doors that she calls “the door to your imagination.”

“The idea came while I was daydreaming with coffee cup in hand and thought what a fun invitation it would be to have that door to wander through and escape the cares of the day, if only for a few minutes,” she said.

Some of her other popular and functional pottery items include soup bowls with a specially designed handle that won’t heat up in the microwave, crocks, vases, and lamps.

“I’m a pretty practical person; that’s why I do a lot of utilitarian ware,” she said. “I want people to use this stuff.”

But she also likes adding a little levity to life through her art.

“I’m not so much into profound statements as I am into making life a little more fun,” Mann said. “Humor and laughter are very important to me, and to share that with other people is a joy.”

She said she has always loved “being in the marketplace, meeting and talking with people. They give me feedback, tell me how much they enjoy my work, that it makes them smile. To me, that’s the definition of success.”

A door shuts, and reopens

Mann’s affinity for clay, she said, “started with my first can of Play-Doh, and there was no turning back.”

She said a friend once told her that pottery “isn’t just what you do; it’s who you are.”

But the drive to create work that brings forth smiles depends on a certain lightness of spirit, and after decades in the studio, she suffered a personal tragedy that brought her creative impulses to a halt.

In 2012, her adult daughter, who had been living in California, passed away suddenly, and Mann found herself unable to create the art that had always sustained her.

“When my daughter died, my creative door shut,” she said.

Unable to find joy in her art, she stayed away from the studio for five years.

She took a job at the Buckfield woodworking plant that manufactures rolling pins, furniture parts, and, famously, the wooden Easter eggs used in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

She enjoyed the work and the camaraderie of her co-workers, but as she grew older, the 67-year-old said, “the physical demands of industrial production were starting to take their toll.”

And, after lying dormant for five years, her creative impulses were gradually returning.

“I was feeling the tug of pottery again, and welcoming it. Ideas were starting to percolate again.”

She ventured back into pottery for the first time about a year ago, tentatively at first, creating a small amount of work intended to please only herself.

After sitting mostly idle for half a decade, her pottery studio has been undergoing a face-lift, as she cleans and rearranges shelving and equipment.

On June 5, her birthday, she prepared to fire the first new batch of pottery created under the Earth and Fire Pottery banner. The kiln in her studio was full to the brim with cups, mugs, and soup bowls, crowded together in layers.

“That excitement is still there,” Mann said. “Each time I divide a bag of clay up into balls, and know that each one is going to become something wonderful, it never ceases to amaze me.”

Art and music, “a marvelous combination”

Before heading into the pottery studio, Mann begins each day with music, another passion that has been with her for a lifetime.

She bought her first guitar at the age of 12 and taught herself to play chords, getting together to play with friends in high school, during a time when music seemed to be everywhere.

“We were caught up in the folk music movement,” she said.

She traded her guitar for a fiddle more than 15 years ago, but set it aside without playing for a couple of years.

Then, as time and circumstances allowed, she began to take lessons and workshops, learning to play using a combination of “basic sight reading and, mostly, playing by ear,” she said.

She spent time at Maine Fiddle Camp in Montville, a summer music camp that encourages participation by musicians of all ages and ability levels.

“Going to Maine Fiddle Camp was huge. There’s a lot of love there,” she said.

She also began seeking out contradances on weekends, listening and learning the traditional fiddle tunes.

Although she can read music, she said she prefers learning by ear because “it really forces me to focus.”

When she saw an ad in the newspaper for a beginner fiddle class taught through SAD 44 Adult Education with instructor Paul Cormier, she jumped at the chance to enroll.

“Although I wasn’t a beginner, I went to pick his brain, and unlearn some bad habits,” she said.

Mann believes that she has been drawn to music by the same impulse that drew her to creative work in the visual arts.

“It’s just an absolutely marvelous combination,” she said, noting that morning music sets the stage for a productive day in the studio and puts everyday worries in perspective.

“Fiddling is every day,” Mann said. “No matter what fresh hell the day might bring, at least I can control the music and the joy and start the day with that.”

Better Late Than Never

Some of the first people Mann met when she arrived in western Maine in 1984 were musicians, members of the loosely organized No Name Yet Band, who played together for fun.

She recently reconnected with several of the original members, including Cormier, and a new group, the Better Late Than Never Band, was formed. The band members bring together fiddles, accordions, a pennywhistle, and other folk instruments to play old-fashioned tunes in a traditional folk style.

In April they kicked off a series of monthly contradances, organized by Mann to honor the memory of legendary local musician Richard Felt.

The dances are held at the Franklin Grange in Bryant Pond, where Felt was a lifetime member and the Grange master for 35 years, on the first Saturday of each month from 7 to 9 p.m.

Her goal when she took up fiddling, Mann said, was “to get to a level of playing where people might ask me to play with them. And here I am.”

She also hosts a “fiddle jam” at the Greenwood Town Hall in Locke Mills from 6 to 9 p.m. on the second and fourth Fridays of each month. The first hour is dedicated to playing in a slower tempo that encourages musicians of all ability levels to join in, and gives everyone a chance to get warmed up.

As Mann settles into “retirement,” her days are no less busy, but her schedule is more flexible.

Throughout a typical day, she checks the drying stage of pottery pieces in progress, mixes glazes, and determines what steps to take next in the studio. While waiting for pieces to air-dry, she catches up on “the business end of things,” processing orders and invoices.

“My day doesn’t end at 5,” she notes. “I don’t know a potter worth their salt who doesn’t live where their studio is” to enable them to keep an eye on the progress of their work.

Having some flexibility “is important with the physical limitations of aging,” she said, adding, “I can’t control the aging process, so I’m going to work with it.”

As she rededicates herself to music and pottery in her retirement, Mann said she thinks often of a quote from author, educator, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you alive, and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

“Things have come full circle,” she said. “I feel like I’m starting a second life with this retirement gig.”