The ceramics studio can be easily missed if you do not know what you’re looking for. Located along Adirondack View Road, it is the tan house with the green garage door, somewhat hidden by a bush. An old concrete staircase leads up to the front door, where the hours of the ceramics studio are written in neat penciled handwriting. Inside, rows of glazed pottery immediately greet you on shelves facing the door. To the right is a room for mashing clay with your hands, to the left are the wheels. Nine of them sit in a row by the window, well-used and well-loved, and opposite them on the table lies a great bag of dark, wet clay.
“We really don’t discourage people from making what they want to make,” says Omar Valencia ’19, president of the ceramics club, as he places a mug onto one of the tables with an inscription that reads “I hate you Dad.” He pulls another object off one of the many shelves in the studio and holds it up in the light – a beautifully crafted pipe. It is one of the studio’s more interesting pieces, and demonstrates there is room for all kinds of creativity in the space.
Coming to the studio is a user-defined experience. You can come in and play with clay for an hour, just to feel it in your hands, or you can commit to coming in every week and slowly create an advanced work of art. There is plenty of clay for everyone to use, courtesy of the college. However, Valencia says that he does not want the studio to be filled with objects no one ever picks up. Instead, he would like people to come in and create works of art they are proud of and then take home. Many pieces have been forgotten – along with the myriad bowls and mugs that adorn the walls of the studio, a rose made of clay petals waits for its owner silently in the corner.
Ceramics is a rewarding but challenging art. If you visit the studio, Valencia says, it is unlikely you will create anything on the first day. You will struggle to master the basic techniques on the wheel and you may mess up this or that – with clay, if one thing goes wrong the entire piece can fall apart. The second day you will begin to shape something, and even then, you may mess up and have to start the entire project over. This is why so many stick to creating bowls. Bowls are single blocks of clay, unlike pots or other pieces that require multiple parts, and can be made quickly with minimal risk.
Thankfully, there are monitors during the studio’s hours that help visitors out with whatever they are trying to make. Omar is one of these monitors, and he begins instructing instinctively as I watch him beat a ball of clay. He describes centering and keeping everything uniform as the clay spins on the wall, poking a hole to form a bowl, and then “lifting the clay,” which consists of actually throwing the piece on the wheel.
“So it’s spinning, right? And it’s just this, like, amorphous blob with a hole in the middle,” Valencia says. “First I’m going to have to pull back, and make the hole wider, and then from there I’m going to have to lift up so it’s just this cylinder.”
Valencia goes on, step after step. Each step, there is potential for a mistake to be made that would ruin the whole thing.
“Often times people will come into the studio once and not make anything and be discouraged,” he says. “What my ceramics teach used to say was that the first few times you’re throwing on the wheel are just the periods of suffering. Where it’s just … sometimes as hard as you try, it’s just not going to work out. But for whatever reason, it you stick with it, there’s just this one day where it clicks. And you actually make something.”
Coming to the ceramics studio is an experience that everyone at the college should try. Ceramics does not have to be a serious endeavor for every visitor – it can be a stressbuster, a place to hang out with friends or go on a date. The club is also always looking for new monitors to extend the hours that it is open.
When I ask him why he loves clay making, Valencia replies thoughtfully.
“What I do is I make a craft, and it’s just really fun make something with my own hands and just actually see that come into fruition,” he says. Here’s this random ball of clay, and with that there’s so much potential to what it can become.”
The studio’s hours are listed on the studio door and can also be accessed via the organization’s middlink page.
