VIDALIA — As if to prove the axiom that acts of God are not respecters of men or their good causes, a sudden downpour Friday afternoon sent Vidalia resident Donna Jones and several friends scurrying to cover garage sale tables in her yard.

The garage sale Jones was organizing along with 12 other families — which took place Saturday — was a benefit for local pottery artist Lindsay Rogers.

Rogers, 28, the artist in residence at Conner Burns Pottery studio, will soon be moving to Asheville, N.C., to begin another artist residency.

The proceeds from the sale will help Rogers buy a potter’s wheel.

“We just wanted to help her out,” Jones said.

Burns said it could be seen a different way.

“It looks like a lot of people want to push her out the door,” he said, jokingly.

During the years leading up to opening their own studios, potters have several ways of developing their skills, Rogers said.

They can either go to pottery school, do an artist residency or have an apprenticeship, she said.

Rogers has been a resident at the Burns studio for two years, and for three years before that she was a resident at a pottery studio in Maryland that used a wood-burning kiln.

The studio she is moving to — which will house four potters and two glass blowers — will use a kiln that burns methane, Rogers said.

The source of the methane will be from a landfill the studio is built on top of, she said.

“It’s pretty much the only thing like it in the world,” she said.

While she is a resident at the studio, a business incubator that provides artists with an office and studio, Rogers will take business classes, she said.

Picking up a nearby sack, Rogers explained that every family in the garage sale was involved in a contest to find the item that best represents garage sale junk.

To the appreciative groans of the rest of the garage sale committee, she unveiled a large conch shell rigged with flashing lights.

“This is your quintessential garage sale item,” she said.