News – Clay Pittsburgh

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Getting Good Traction

Clay Pittsburgh is moving forward. Our Newsletter mailing list is growing, and we are becoming a clearing house for pottery related information. As we work on putting together our next Pittsburgh Potters Tour in November, KDKA news did a story on their Sunday Morning Spotlight. Check it out below.

Fueling Creativity: Clay Pittsburgh's Kiln Fund

It Ain’t Done ‘Till It’s Fired

Potters need a place to fire their work. Particularly emerging artists. Please support local potters by helping to provide a way for them to move forward and fire their work.

Clay Pittsburgh, a local nonprofit, is raising money to buy two kilns to help potters bridge the transition out of the classroom, and into the studio. Our plan is to purchase two kilns, plus shelves and post, which makes our fund raising goal for this project $10,000.

Folks wanting to transition from a classroom environment to a studio setting get stuck around glazing and firing issues. Setting up a home studio with a wheel, shelving, table and sink is doable. But kilns are expensive and need special wiring and ventilation, and can feel like a scary challenge. They are not something you would put in a spare bedroom.

Clay Pittsburgh’s missions is “to advancing the ceramic arts for artists, learners, and the community through education, exhibitions, retail opportunities, and artist services.”

Please donate to this Go Fund Me Campaign.

Dale Huffman Retrospective

Pittsburgh Potters Tour News

The tour received positive reviews both from participating artists and from tourists. We will be posting survey results once more responses are received. So check back in a bit. If you have yet to fill out your artist survey click here. If you were a tourist, click here to fill out the tourist survey. Results will be posted by the end of May. If you have photos to share, please click here. We would love more images to post!

This note was sent to the tourists:

We hope you found it entertaining, inspiring, and educational.

Our main goal was to showcase the immense variety and talent exhibited by Pittsburgh potters across a wide spectrum of styles, techniques, and levels of experience. There were 20 studios on the tour hosting a total of 50 artists, with prices of work ranging from $5 to $25,000. There were wood fired pots, gas reduction fired pots, soda fired pots, and pots fired in electric kilns, and Raku fired pots. There were wheel-thrown, hand-built, and slip-cast pots decorated with innumerable different techniques and glazes. There were students just starting out in clay, potters working out of basements and garages, professional production studios, teaching studios, and studios with galleries.

If you are a buyer and admirer of ceramics, we hope you found your new favorite pot and connected with local artists whose work you enjoy.

If you are a maker as well as a buyer, perhaps seeing a variety of studios was inspiring. If you are a pottery student, maybe this event illuminated the path ahead.

From whatever angle you arrived at the tour, we would greatly appreciate your feedback (both positive and negative) to help Clay Pittsburgh move forward with its mission of advancing the ceramic arts for artists, learners, and the community through education, exhibitions, retail opportunities, and artist services. Your participation in this survey will also help us as we apply for grants in the future.

Sincerely,
Clay Pittsburgh Board Members