BRATTLEBORO — When Alan Steinberg convened his pottery and sculpture class at Brattleboro Clayworks on Jan. 9, he left his first half-century of teaching and entered his second.
But Steinberg previously passed another 50-year teaching milestone, though “I guess it depends on what you're counting,” he said.
The Clayworks co-founder started his teaching career not with clay, but by molding little minds. In 1967 and 1968, as Steinberg was attending Queens College to study education, he was teaching at a daycare and kindergarten in the New York City public school system and a Lower East Side settlement house.
So that makes 52 years.
The clay came in shortly after Steinberg started teaching. During a summer job as a camp counselor, Steinberg and his charges went on a field trip to the pottery studio of Gertraud Stosiek, in Hillsdale, N.Y. He found himself fascinated, and he soon bought a potter's wheel.
“I dragged that second-hand wheel into my kindergarten class at P.S. 133 in [Bedford–Stuyvesant], and let every kid try it,” said Steinberg, who noted his boss, the principal, was not pleased. Letting every kid try a potter's wheel made a terrible mess, but not of the kids.
“It was only on me!” he said. “We were expected to present ourselves as professionals in public school,” and being covered with clay didn't conform with that image.
Steinberg left the city for Pittsfield, Mass., where he taught elementary school for six years. During his last year there, he and his then-wife found themselves expecting a child.
“I had 25 kids at school and a baby here [at home],” Steinberg said, so he left teaching to become a full-time potter in 1977. He settled in Monterey, Mass., near Great Barrington in southern Berkshire County.
“I was in the basement of an unfinished house off a dirt road, off another dirt road,” said Steinberg. But because those dirt roads were in a big tourist community, the remote location didn't hinder his success in earning a living.
“People found their way to the door,” he said.
Steinberg also began selling his pottery at craft shows and at a gallery on Cape Cod. Soon, he could afford to pay his apprentices.
“I was still teaching them, but they'd get paid for what they did,” he said.
Founded by a 'we'
When Steinberg and his wife split up, he went in search of a new home. Through his craft show connections, he learned about Brattleboro and visited a few times.
He fell in love with the community, especially because of the support it showed craftspeople.
By 1983, he helped found Brattleboro Clayworks, a collectively owned pottery studio, gallery, and school.
“Clayworks was founded by a 'we,'” said Steinberg.
He, Marcia Toole, and Elysse Link started the collective - before they had a location. They put up signs around town asking if anyone was interested in starting a pottery studio, said Steinberg, and in the first year, they gathered about 25 people. The group conducted research into other arts collectives, visiting them and studying their bylaws.
During a pivotal moment in the creation of what was to become Clayworks, “we said, 'Bring your checkbooks to the next meeting,'” said Steinberg. The original 25 became eight founding members, plus Casey, Steinberg's son, who was 6 years old.
“Everybody had to kick in some money, but I was penniless,” Steinberg said, and added, “But I had the kiln. It's still here, outside.”
The Clayworks founders found a location for their new collective at 532 Putney Rd., where it remains today.
“It was full of parts of old bicycles when we moved in,” Steinberg said. So they cleaned the space and made way for a bunch of equipment, including Steinberg's old gas kiln, which they loaded on a flatbed truck and moved from Monterey.
“And so we started to work. In April 1983, we fired up the kiln for the first time. I didn't want to leave it alone, so I slept on the glaze table that night,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg is the only one of the original eight who still belongs to the collective. Some have either died or stopped doing pottery, but the others - like local artists Teta Hilsdon, Naomi Lindenfeld, and Matthew Tell - are still working with clay in some form.
These days, Steinberg combines three main areas of focus: art, teaching, and therapy. He works part-time as a psychotherapist, and he does some art therapy and instruction at Inner Fire, a retreat in Brookline for people looking to discontinue using psychiatric medications.
“I get a lot out of that, combining them,” he said.
“There's a connection between clay work and positive mental support,” said Steinberg, who has led, alone and with his friend, Fred Taylor, a variety of workshops working with clay.
An inner dialogue
Steinberg still teaches one class a semester at Clayworks, but he stopped being a wheel potter in 1981 - partly because he rented a small studio with no wheel, and, he said, “because I had gotten bored with the potter's wheel.”
His specialty now is teaching hand-building and sculpture.
One of the exercises Steinberg said he uses in these classes is for his students to work on a lump of clay, but with their eyes closed.
“With every pinch, I ask them to have an image of a thing or person for whom they feel grateful, and transmit that to the clay. It's a 'blessing bowl,'” he said.
Another activity Steinberg likes to incorporate into his classes is to share a poem or a story in his pottery classes.
“It may unite an inner dialogue with the sculpture the person made in the workshop,” he said.
While still working on the wheel, Steinberg had started draping slabs of textured clay over his pots.
“Then, I said one day, 'Why not hang the slabs on the wall?' That was the end of my wheel work,” he said, although he did continue teaching the technique.
The challenge of learning the potter's wheel “leads to lots of attrition,” said Steinberg. “You have to learn the hardest part in the beginning - the centering - and then you can play,” he said. But with hand building, “you can have fun right off the bat,” he said.
He suggests beginners try both hand building and learning the wheel. “Until you do it, you don't know which one speaks to you the best,” he said.
Steinberg wishes Clayworks could find a larger facility beyond the 1,800 square feet the collective has occupied since 1983.
“The space here serves renters, students, and members in one space, and sometimes it can't do it simultaneously,” he said.
Accessibility is also an issue. The entrance to Clayworks is down an outdoors set of stairs. Finding an affordable and accessible space is a challenge.
Once Steinberg finishes renovating a rental property he owns with his wife, Linda Sturgeon, he said he can devote more time to helping Clayworks find a new space and raise funds for it, and to sculpture.
“I'm looking forward to more playtime here,” he said.