Salem artist Dorothy Arthur taught visual arts in the Salem Public Schools for 26 years before retiring in 2009 to focus more on her lifelong interest in working with clay. She received several awards during her teaching career including 1998 Salem Rotary Educator of the Year, 2004 Massachusetts Elementary Art Educator of the Year and 2009 Massachusetts Art Educator of the Year from the Massachusetts Art Education Association.

In 2011 Dorothy started her home based business Dot’s Pots and began working on a series of lanterns that combined her interests in ceramics and architecture. The ideas for the motifs of the lantern cutouts were inspired by the various window styles of historic Salem, MA  buildings including Old Town Hall, Hamilton Hall, Peabody Essex Museum, St. Peter’s Church, Salem Witch Museum, Custom House as well as many homes on Federal and Chestnut Streets. Dot has since added New England windows representing Marblehead, North Andover, Revere, Beverly, Newburyport and Portsmouth, NH to her Architectural series. Trips to New Orleans, Italy and Ireland have expanded her collection of Architectural windows into a Travel series. Dot’s popular Nature Lantern series currently include dragonflies, leaves, vines, ocean creatures and seasonal jack o’lanterns and snowflake windows with new ideas brewing.

Dot has added house plaques, baby plaques and birth announcement ornaments to her line up of  custom order ceramic gifts. Unique kitchen wares include kitchen graters, oil bottles, chip and dip sets, brie bakers and sauce dishes. In 2016 Dot added a new line of ceramic tide and kitchen clocks to the collection.

Dot is a member of the Massachusetts Art Education Association, the North Shore Art Teachers Association, the International Ceramic Arts Network, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Salem Arts Association and the Marblehead Arts Association.