Pottery wheels whir and wet clay spatters the hair of Macalester College students, sleeves rolled up, hunched over their half-finished pots.

It's a scene that would have delighted the namesake of the Joan Adams Mondale Hall of Studio Art.

"What really impressed me, always, was her generosity to people who were just starting out," said Macalester President Brian Rosenberg, who vividly recalls Joan Mondale standing in his living room and admiring a project one of his young sons had made in a middle school pottery class. "She was telling him how wonderful it was, and there was a genuineness about it. She wasn't making conversation. She was genuinely taking pleasure in the work of a young kid."

The wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale took her love of art and a lifetime in the political spotlight and leveraged it into a global legacy. She turned the vice presidential mansion into a showcase for contemporary art and fought for fine art, folk art, crafts and even the tiny stamp-sized images she helped select for the postal service. She turned the nation's public spaces into galleries. She earned the moniker Joan of Art.

"The arts are essential to our lives," Mondale once told the Star Tribune, when asked whether art is a luxury or a necessity. "They offer food for the spirit and the soul."

Her own art could be found on display at the Smithsonian and in homes across Minnesota, much of it given away as gifts.

"She was very unpretentious about her pottery," said Lt. Gov.-elect Tina Smith, who has a JM-stamped bowl Mondale gave her — a bowl that once served as a water dish for Mondale's beloved dogs.