From Outward Bound to full-time artist

ELY- Don’t believe that art jobs are real jobs? You should talk to Nina Wray.
Wray, the owner of Moon Dog Studio, is a full-time ceramicist, living and working in Ely and is the Timberjay’s featured artist for the Harvest Moon Festival.
While Wray was raised in the Twin Cities area, she was born in Hobart, Tasmania to an American mother and an Australian father. Her family moved to Minnesota from Australia when she was around one year old.
Wray credits her interest in ceramic arts to her experience at Plymouth’s Wayzata High School and her art teacher. “Pottery was the thing that got me through school when I didn’t want to go to school,” Wray told the Timberjay. “My teacher, Nancy Hanily-Dolan, made students take art seriously.”
Wray attended Colorado State University with the aim of making art a career but left after three semesters. “The big school and I just weren’t a good fit.” While she decided what to do and where to go next, she became an intern with the Voyageur Outward Bound School in 2010. She liked working for Outward Bound and stayed for the next ten years. Along the way, she married Brian Liggett, who she met at Outward Bound.

Starting a business
Wray picked up a used potter’s wheel and kiln in 2018 and started making ceramics again as a hobby. “At first, I was making stuff for family and friends. Then, I started looking over what I wanted to do for work and investigated if this was a viable career.”
In 2019, Wray and Liggett bought a house in Ely across from the high school. Wray installed her wheel in the basement. Wray produced pottery for sale part-time while working part-time with Outward Bound.
In 2021, she went fulltime with Moon Dog Studio, taking her wares to weekend craft fairs from May through December. She also sells her work at the Ely Farmers Market, the Blueberry/Art and Harvest Moon festivals as well as online at moondogceramicstudio.com.
Wray has already developed a dedicated customer base, and she’s recently expanded into wholesale and custom orders. She’s also placed her ceramic pieces in the Meadows Gallery in Ely, the A.M.F. Gallery in the Northrup King Building in Minneapolis, and the museum stores at the Minnesota History Center and the Mill City Museum.
The regular round of craft shows have paid off in more than just sales, said Wray. She’s met contacts whose custom work or wholesale requests helped her to extend the business reach of Moon Dog Studio.
Her extension into wholesale production stemmed from a conversation at a recent craft fair. “We met at my booth and we chatted. She was with the Minnesota Historical Society, and through her I was able to sell my work in the museum stores. She’s also met others who came later with large custom requests, like the owners of Ember & Bean Roasting Co. The business has a pair of shops, in Hudson, Wis., and Oakdale, Minn., selling barista-made coffee drinks and coffee beans roasted on the premises. Ember & Bean ordered a coffee shop’s worth of identical sets of dishes including cups, saucers, and bowls. Another order saw Wray producing corporate gifts: close to two hundred identical pots all stamped with the custom logo for United Airlines Mileage Plus Visa cardholders.

Moon Dog
Wray named her business after the rare phenomenon of paraselene, commonly called moon dogs, where a halo or one or more bright spots appears around the moon. This atmospheric rarity is comparable to the equally uncommon occurrence of parhelion, or sun dogs.
“I have been lucky enough to see moon dogs on many of my trips into the wilderness. I chose the name to remember those times and my love of the outdoors,” Wray said.