You’d think Fred Conlon was raised by negligent parents out back of a junk yard with 18 pitbulls and a make-believe friend named Krull. And yet maybe the truth explains more about this college-educated Rocky Mountain high artist than you’d think.

For starters, Mom and Dad brought him up in a small ski town nestled in the stunning mountains of colorful Colorado, a place called Steamboat Springs. And not that being the kid of two high school English teachers is all that bad, if you think chaperoning 152 proms and dances a year doesn’t make one a little neurotic. But really can you escape the all-knowing eyes of not one, but two highly intelligent post-pubescent-teen secret service agents even half the time and live to tell about it without a single grammatical error? True, he never has to use spell-check on his computer to this day, but it’s a credit to his kind and sympathetic heart that he allows five grammar books to remain on the bookshelves at home. For while he himself might not need them, certainly his wife, Taya, and their four children may find them necessary just to keep up with him.

Upon graduation from the University of Utah with a degree in Public Communications, Fred’s dream was to open up a pottery shop (can you say, “What?!”). But with his family’s support and about 15 credits in pottery classes under his belt, Sugar Post Pottery celebrated its grand opening in October 1998.

Sugar Post gets its name from its neighborhood in Salt Lake City—Sugar House—and its original location across the street from the post office. In 1999, after the first army helmet turtle was created, Sugar Post Metal headed in the direction of fulltime metal production. A change of location and the addition of a separate metal facility brought about many new additions to the metal line of creatures, as well as custom projects for both functional use and the purely artistic.

Sugar Post Pottery is still in Sugar House, at 1135 East and 2100 South, while Sugar Post Metal has moved to a larger facility at 80 West Truman Ave, still in Salt Lake City. You will find Fred in back working feverishly to keep up with demand (okay, really it’s just so he can stay warm in the 20-degree temperatures of Utah winter)

Sugar Post Metal is proud to be a part of Sugar House in the 21st century and honored to be housed in its glorious past.

— Taya Conlon