Cher fires up excitement at Troy pottery store

Bill Garlow/DDN

By Kelly Baker
kbaker@DaytonDailyNews.com

TROY | Stacy Geuy was preparing for a private party Sunday night at the WaterStone Fired Arts and Craft when she asked the vehicle driver who would bring the S.H.A.R.E. group to the studio.

"Now will any of these people need wheelchair access?" Geuy asked the driver — thinking the first two letters in the acronym meant seniors and handicapped.

"You don't know who's coming, do you?" the limo driver replied. “No,” Geuy admitted.

"It's Cher."

Geuy was speechless. She said of a man who called earlier, "He said he was with the Cher group. I thought he meant S.H.A.R.E."

Geuy, an employee and soon-to-be owner of the Troy pottery shop, later learned the singer, who performed Monday at the Nutter Center, often takes her bands and dancers to ceramic studios to relax before a show.

The group arrived at the East Water Street pottery studio at 6:30 p.m. Sunday after a stop at Michaels Arts & Crafts store near the Mall at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek. At Michaels, the diva was spotted by fans and signed a few autographs, said Arundi Venkayya Cox, who was shopping there at the time. "I turned around and there she was," Venkayya Cox said. "She was wearing big 70s-type sunglasses. I thought ‘Oh my gosh, I can't believe how thin she is.’ ”

At WaterStone, Cher chose a large mug, which she designed in a two-toned jade wave pattern that will appear after firing. The mug, which the singer signed on the bottom, will be shipped to her Malibu, Calif., home after it is fired and cooled. The other pieces created by Cher's band and back-up singers and dancers will also be shipped — some as far as Belgium and London, Geuy said.

While the group allowed no photographs and provided no autographs, Cher gave the store owners, Janet and Bob Lybarger, Geuy and other employees 14 tickets to Monday's concert and promised to send an autographed photo to the studio.

And, of course, Geuy has her chair.

Going into a back room, Geuy pulled out a folding chair with a small "c" marked on the back.

"This is the chair she sat in," Geuy said. "I'm going to paint ‘Cher's chair’ on it."

Contact Kelly Baker at 335-4777

[From the Dayton Daily News: 07.24.2003]