BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro Clayworks on Putney Road, a venerable place to those who work there or simply love ceramics, yet also a best-kept secret to many, will celebrate its 35th year on the last Saturday in October.
I spoke with Clayworks' past and present members, who reflected on their time with the cooperative, starting with Alan Steinberg, the only original member of the collective still with the studio.
“My work in clay has gone from being 'about nature,' to hopefully being 'of nature' - clay as stone, clay as Mother Earth, clay as archeological artifacts from long-lost cultures, whose wisdom is being lost to us,” says Steinberg, who, in our interview, marveled at the changes through the years - and also at how much hasn't changed.
Steinberg was already a professional potter when he arrived form Montague, Mass., in 1981. He saw a flyer advertised a meeting about starting a cooperative ceramics studio. To everyone's amazement, 25 people showed up. He was one of them.
The group met once a week for a year.
Along the way, participants took a field trip to two established studios in Somerville, Mass., so they could get an idea from those collectives of how to organize their fledgling operation.
At one point, Steinberg recalls, one of the Somerville group members said loudly, “You know, this is like being married!”
Someone else said, “Next time, bring your checkbooks!”
Steinberg says the next time they met, only he and seven other people remained: Naomi Lindenfeld, Matt Tell, Marcia Toole, Elise Link, Teta Hilsdon, Sally Luger, and Doris Fredericks.
The eight of them “kicked real-estate tires for a while ... looked at various spaces. Nothing was quite right,” he recalls.
Then they found the basement beneath 532 Putney Rd. Now Friends of the Sun, the building accommodated a stained-glass artist, a leatherworker, a retail store, and the then-brand-new River Gallery School were there, too.
A sporting goods store took most of the first floor, and the basement, which would become Clayworks, was full of bike parts. What now is the entrance was then a steeply sloping driveway that led to a garage door. The bank was held in place by old tires.
For a potter, it's all about the fire! The kiln was built even before the studio space was created. Steinberg's kiln in Massachusetts was taken apart brick by brick and transported to Brattleboro. The massive structure sits just outside the Clayworks workspace.
Eventually, the basement was cleared of discarded bikes and bike parts, and the studio took shape, opening in October 1983.
* * *
Of the original members, says Steinberg, “Teta Hilsdon, Naomi Lindenfeld, Matt Tell, and I were seriously trying to make a living. The others were more part-time. Doris Fredericks was mostly interested in teaching. She left pretty early on - that was the first hint that we had to do something about the space for teaching. Even now, there's only space for two classes - one wheel class and one hand-building class.”
Within the first decade, half the members left to start their own respective studios, which drastically raised the expenses for Steinberg, Hilsdon, Tell, and Lindenfeld, the remaining members. Consequently, the collective decided to open the facility to artists for a monthly rental fee.
At this point, Steinberg begins to sound like a caring parent whose children have flown the nest, leaving him with a certain melancholy and nostalgia.
“There are people who've moved on who I continue to miss,” he says. Some of those were employees (at one time, Steinberg had four assistants working for him) who went on to have their own careers as professional potters elsewhere. Some were renters or members.
But here, Steinberg's eyes light up.
He says that Steve Proctor, a local potter and Hilsdon's husband, told him that “his vision of Clayworks is that it's an incubator.”
“And it's true - that's an important role it continues to play,” says Steinberg, who points out that, in fact, Proctor is a perfect example.
* * *
Steve Proctor started out at Clayworks as a complete novice, having gotten the bug watching his then-10-year-old daughter take a class one year before.
“The beauty of a place like Clayworks is that pottery-making is an equipment-intensive endeavor,” Proctor says. “I had the opportunity to try things out without a big investment.”
“I always knew I wanted to make large pots, and I failed a lot,” says Proctor, whose website states that he “explores the clay vessel as sculptural statement” in his works of “monumental scale.”
“I lost a lot of pots,” he says. “But Clayworks gave me the opportunity to experiment, and it turned into a seduction.”
* * *
“It's interesting how it's evolved,” says Steinberg. “I didn't see it coming.”
What he means, he explains, is that it's been an organic process. As the classes have become increasingly popular, the demand for the space increases.
To meet this demand, there has been, for the past several years, a revolving system for entry-level renters, where those who have been there the longest must make way for someone on the waiting lists.
Clayworks now offers an in-between position, “working renter,” which Steinberg characterizes as “like dating.”
Working renters can put work in the on-site showroom, and have a one-year guarantee of not being revolved out. In exchange, they are assigned duties that keep the studio running smoothly.
The system works for artists who do not want to give up the space - and it also acts as a trial period to see if more involvement works for everyone and if full membership in the collective would be a good fit.
* * *
Claudia Teachman is the second-longest-tenured member at Clayworks. She first came there and was involved “peripherally” in 1995, she says, becoming more seriously involved in 1997 and 1998. Her tiny animals that stand alone or are attached to pots are popular at craft shows around the region.
“Alan, Naomi, and Teta were there when I joined. When Naomi left, in 2005, at that time there were a handful of renters: myself, Nancy Riege, Christy Herbert, Kathy Preston, Billie Stark. We all decided to become members.”
But, she recalls, “only Alan knew how to load and fire the kiln, how to mix glazes, how to run the bisque kiln.”
“I learned all those things from Alan,” she says. “We said to him, 'We can do this...we're ready to grow up!'”
Members then divided jobs and created shifts for the showroom shifts. “We gave blood, sweat, and tears and a bit of our soul,” Teachman recalls.
It was, as Teta Hildson says, a “production studio,” where potters were intent on output.
According to Teachman, Steinberg could fill the huge kiln just with his work. By all accounts, it was a very crowded place in those days - but this situation was somewhat relieved when Steinberg decided he was more interested in producing sculptural work and teaching. He now is the sole teacher of hand-building techniques at Clayworks.
“It's a huge amount of work to keep a studio running,” Teachman continues. One intense aspect of running the studio is firing the gas-fired kiln, which takes days. The firing must be watched closely to control the temperatures - measured and tested by pyrometric cones that melt at precise temperatures - so that the glazed clay is gradually and safely brought to the temperature.
“A gas kiln needs to be babied along,” she says.
A studio member assigned the task monitors the temperature through “peeps” - small windows on the sides of the kiln.
* * *
Several potters agree that one of the things they love about being part of the Clayworks cooperative is the ready availability of advice from their peers - and just general networking.
“There's a lot of give and take,” says Teachman. “You find out what works for you.”
Teta Hilsdon concurs, recalling a more experienced potter watching her make handles and being emphatic that she should make them “off the mug” - first attaching clay to the mug and then pulling the handle, now one with the piece, into shape.
“It looks more organically part of the mug, as if growing out of it,” she says. “It changed my work - for the better!”
Over the years people who have found their way to Clayworks have been complete novices who “always wanted to try it” or someone like Rob Cartelli, who came on board with a degree in ceramics and has become an award-winning potter with delicate porcelain tableware.
“Sometimes,” Teachman continues, “people come who have been potters in the past, got a 'regular job,' have finally retired, and are keen to get back to it. Clayworks has provided a space for all and every level.”
* * *
“We're a go-with-the-flow kind of place,” says Teachman. “When a problem presents itself, we work together on solving it.”
For Teta Hilsdon, learning to work together was an important part of her time at Clayworks.
“I remember what Alan told me once: 'You push and pull, but you believe in the process.' For many of us who later found ourselves working with a group, we cut our teeth on that process at Clayworks.'”
The spirit of working together extends to the art and craft as well, epitomized for Hilsdon by the unloading of pieces from the kiln.
“When you unload and discuss pieces as they come out [...] it's like a family discussing something you deeply care about,” she says.
* * *
Shari Zabriskie, who came to Clayworks as a renter in 1997, became a member in 2005. She taught kids' classes for a few years, on her own and through several area private elementary schools. When Rob Cartelli left, she became the sole teacher of adults on the wheel.
“Clayworks represents my entire pottery experience - it's been everything! It's given me space, freedom, openness, sharing, allowed me to explore, to grow, to find my own voice."
Zabriskie is known for her birch pots. She came upon that design in 2008.
“I was so in love with ceramics I wanted to be able to make a living at it. I kept exploring, pushing,” she says. “I was playing with white clay, texture, different stains. Someone in my family commented my mug looked like a birch tree.”
Although she has been making a living at it for “eight or nine years now,” she is now hearing her “body's call to spend less time at the wheel.”
This has led to a new adventure for Zabriskie - opening Wheelhouse, a new ceramics space downtown with original Clayworks member Teta Hilsdon.
Zabriskie sees the venture as a move that opens up opportunities for both Clayworks and the new studio: more teaching opportunities for the whole community of potters and new downtown gallery space that could carry work from both studios.
“I want to take what I've learned and give back to the community,” says Zabriskie, her eyes misting a bit above a broad smile.
The current space does amazingly well in handling the current needs of members, renters, and teachers. Yet if Clayworks were to expand - offering more classes, for example, or taking in more members - it's generally conceded that the cooperative would have to find a new space. In spite of putting out feelers in a few situations, the right place has not yet shown itself.
But for those who have made it work, Clayworks is clearly more than the walls around it. Above all else, it remains a place to share the simple love, the craft, and the art of creating in clay.