Clay Art Guild Seizes the Moment
The graceful, whitish curves of the small ceramic bowls and cups found a gentle illumination while sitting upon a sun-drenched shelf that ran across the windowpanes of the Clay Art Studios of the Hamptons on a recent Thursday afternoon.
Next to the windows and lining the other walls, on tall, unfinished wooden shelves, were even more whitish pieces of bisque, the term for clay pottery works that are waiting to be painted or glazed. The products of advanced students or professionals, these pieces were often larger or more elaborate than the pieces on the window shelf, which were made by the beginner students.
The natural light supplemented what the overhead fixtures provided, producing a bright environment ideal for the work being done by Tom Walter, a professional ceramics artist and teacher, and his class of artists-in-training, who shared musings on life and a couple of packs of Tate’s finest during their weekly lesson in hand-building techniques.
“I like the fact that you can make anything. You can make something look like leather or metal. You can make any shape, any form,” said Mr. Walter, who studied fine arts at Stony Brook University, and who treks from his home in Selden to teach and manage the Water Mill studio.
Known affectionately around the studio as “the dragon man” for the bowls he creates with elaborate ceramic dragons wrapped around them, Mr. Walter said working in ceramics is therapeutic and relaxing. “You’re focusing on making the piece, and everything else goes away. It’s like a working meditation.”
The creative freedom is just one reason people have been flocking to the studio, which is run by the Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons in a cozy building on Old Mill Road that is owned by the Water Mill Museum. Ceramics is hugely popular right now, according to the guild’s president, Eve Behar. The inclusion of clay arts in the 2015 Whitney Biennial marked a significant step in its latest ascension. Ms. Behar said restaurants now want handmade ceramic wares, and Etsy.com, the online sales hub for handmade goods, is teeming with ceramics both artistic and functional. She said people are returning to the arts to counter some of the negative impacts that technology has had.
“What’s going on is the more automated we got, people were getting away from hands-on activity. Now I think people are craving actual physical contact with real material,” Ms. Behar said.
Fitting for the sunlight that streamed through the windows on the day she showed two guests around the tiny studio, Ms. Behar donned a cheerful, green-striped apron in preparation for a potter’s wheel demonstration. She first showed the technique of “wedging” the clay — that’s the term for kneading it, much like a baker would knead a lump of dough when baking bread — which is a necessary step before the clay can be sculpted by hand or thrown on the potter’s wheel. She rolled it into a ball, then sat down at the wheel and with skilled hands proceeded to transform it into an elegant bowl within a matter of minutes.
“It’s almost daunting how versatile clay is,” said Ms. Behar, who lives in Sag Harbor, and who studied ceramics internationally, including in Florence, Italy. “It could be the most abstract art or the most utilitarian, functional art.”
The Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons was convened in 2001 by a group of eight local artists who needed a place to operate a gas-powered kiln and a gallery to show their work. The Bridgehampton gallery formerly owned by Elaine Benson, which had shown many ceramic artists, had just recently closed. The guild’s Celadon Gallery was born.
But it wasn’t an easy process. Nancy Robbins, one of the founders, said by phone that the guild had to fight the I.R.S. to prove that it was a legitimate arts organization in order to obtain nonprofit status. The group also had to fight the perception that it was merely a group of potters making pots.
“We are committed to creating an environment for the enrichment of clay arts. Ceramic art is really a fine art. It is not a little craft,” Ms. Robbins said. “The more we can exhibit that type of work, the more people will understand it. . . . We worked for 15 years at this, and we’re finally at a point where we feel people understand and appreciate what we do.”
Ms. Behar and Ms. Robbins said the Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons and its studio fill a need for its members. In 2014, the arts blog Hyperallergic.com wrote that “the ceramics world is a varied and robust place, connected through a network of community studios, specialist galleries, small and medium-sized museums, university ceramics departments, niche publications, Instagram feeds, annual conferences, and feuds. . . . Working in clay is expensive, requires a tremendous investment in heavy equipment and supplies, years ofhands-on training and practice, and is very difficult to embark upon in isolation.”
The Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons used to hold workshops in its members’ private studios. But in 2014, Ms. Behar said, the nonprofit’s board decided to redefine its mission, and it drew on donations and community support to restructure the gallery into a working studio. The Clay Art Studios of the Hamptons offers a variety of classes five days per week for beginner through advanced students, along with open studio time for professionals and regular kiln firings for guild members, who now number more than 90 and include full-time and part-time South Fork residents, “snowbirds,” longtime artists, and others.
Now, the guild is at another turning point in its almost 15-year history. A healthy attendance at its classes and events has sustained the guild financially, and it is about to open a new gallery in a storefront in Bridgehampton at 128 Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike. The gallery will be called Celadon Gallery and Members Shop and will open on Feb. 14 with a show called “Flame.” A grand opening will be planned sometime during the summer season, Ms. Behar said.
“It’s trending, it’s popular,” she said, “and we want to seize the moment.”