Jordan Blankenship got hooked on ceramics when she first sat down at a potter’s wheel in college. It was her freshman year at Florida Gulf Coast University. She wanted to be an art major, possibly go into design — then she threw clay on the wheel for the first time. “My whole perspective changed,” she says.

There was something soothing about the feel of the clay as she worked it with her hands. It was like a meditative experience.

“My brain goes quiet,” she says. “It puts me in such a good headspace.”

She’s now a ceramics artist professionally, selling mugs, candle holders, bowls and other functional art in stores and online. The native Floridian moved to Fort Myers with her family in high school and now has turned her home into her studio, complete with a kiln in the garage and boxes stacked in the dining room ready to ship out.

She ended up majoring in ceramics at FGCU then later getting a master’s degree at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She started working locally at Clay More Ceramics, teaching classes by day then returning home to make her own creations. She first started selling her work at Kaleidoscope Floral in Naples. Since, her business has bloomed. More than 60 retail stores nationwide sell her work. She also sells through her website (jordanbceramics.com) and on Etsy.

Her work is a mix between the artistic and the practical. Ceramics can be fragile and often can make an unpleasant gritty sound when you set them down, so Blankenship recently started incorporating cork into her pieces to create built-in coasters or saucers — giving the result a good practical use that also has a distinctive look. She sees her practice as art, even if most people don’t really realize it. “Handmade objects are an elevated form of art you’re actually using on a day-to-day basis,” she says.