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Nurturing Artists

PennOhio Clay Guild

Clay Place at Standard

High School Exhibition Jurors Launch Young Artists into a Future of Possibility

A Life Landscape

Don Seymour and Clayscapes Pottery

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PennOhio Clay Guild: Nurturing Artists
October 01, 2024
Something has been brewing in New Castle, Pennsylvania among the area’s clay artists for a few years. At the PennOhio Clay Guild, people are talking, equipment is changing hands, ideas are percolating. To understand this association of potters, you must try to wrap your head around two wandering pioneers named Septimus and Jen Bean. The couple made a home in this small Northwestern Pennsylvania city in 2018, stopping along a circuitous route that they have travelled together since their college days at Kent State University in Ohio. Both consider themselves educators, not only in the traditional sense but through a far-reaching conceptual ethos that defines their lives. At first glance, one might think the PennOhio Clay Guild is like many collective clay studios run by artists searching for a way to balance a creative life with paying the bills, but a conversation with Septimus and Jen will take you on your own journey that quickly lets you know that this is much more than a studio.
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High School Exhibition Jurors Launch Young Artists into a Future of Possibility
July 03, 2024
Visitors at Standard Clay in Pittsburgh can stop into the Clay Place at Standard gallery this July to view an unprecedented exhibit of works by sixteen prominent potters. The Juror Collective honors the past jurors of Standard Clay’s Annual High School Student Exhibition. While this group of pieces is a feast for the eyes and minds of the viewers, it is what these works represent that is the real message of the show. Standing as a bridge between the past and future, these artists spark and nourish the creative seed within young people, validating the power of the tactile arts to nourish and foster a concrete exploration and understanding of the world.
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Don Seymour: A Life Landscape
June 09, 2024
It is the rare person who has a clear vision in youth who can look back in age and see its fruition. Don Seymour, owner of Clayscapes Pottery, Inc. in Syracuse, New York is one such person. Through years of making pottery in a home basement studio, selling at festivals, developing wholesale markets, working full time, and raising a family, Seymour held tight to his dream of owning his own pottery business. In October of 2003, he put the name Clayscapes on his clay distributorship and with his wife Kim began to develop the business into the studio, store, and gallery that he envisioned. Today, in the superlative fulfillment of a life’s work, he is taking a step backwards to transition control of his business to his enthusiastic three adult children.
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Archived Articles

The I’m fine. Project: Exploring the Self Image
The artistic process is one that draws on the whole person, rummaging through the depths of emotion and memory, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes painful, emerging in a thing of beauty. For central Pennsylvania friends Maureen Joyce and Carrie Breschi, the cathartic value of working with clay has become a life mission. Through heartbreak and the circumstances of life, these women have come together to offer healing workshops to people seeking emotional wholeness amid life’s inevitable challenges. I’m fine. uses the creation of human masks to explore the self.
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Potter Robert Deane: An Intimate Approach
While all artists have a personal relationship with the materials of their craft, potters share a special bond with clay that spawns a visceral connection to the earth. Southwestern Pennsylvania Potter Robert Deane brings this intimate dynamic to his work – in the clay he digs and refines, in the collaborative projects he undertakes, and especially in the philosophy of his teaching practices. This Media, PA artist teaches adults and children at the Wallingford Art Center outside of Philadelphia.
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Standard Ceramic Acquires Sculpture House Ceramics Division
Florida-based Sculpture House is a business with a long history in the greater New York area that traces a century old history through the tutelage of two families. By the end of this summer, Standard Ceramic’s Turnbull family will become the third line of craft-oriented businessmen to extend part of that tradition. Standard will acquire the Ceramics Division of Sculpture House as Bruner Barrie, the company’s CEO, moves closer to a full retirement.
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Eberle Studios: Developing Artistic Vision
Pittsburgh artist Ed Eberle is well-known in western Pennsylvania and around the world. With a career spanning over 50 years, Eberle works in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, mixed media, and installations, but most recognizably with ceramics. His porcelain vessels and sculptures often feature abstractions, geometry, and detailed figurative painting with terra sigillata used both as “gesso” and “paint.” To further a legacy in fine art ceramics, Eberle and family are now opening artist studios and open studio workspaces in Homestead, near the Waterfront shopping center.
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Blair Meerfeld and The Art League School of Alexandria: Community of Inspiration
When Blair Meerfeld left a solitary Colorado life as a studio potter in 2009 to accept a position at a thriving East Coast art school, he had no idea how radically his life would change. As the Chair of the Ceramics Department at The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, Meerfeld oversees over 1,400 students a year in a program that has continued to grow under his stewardship. In a position that he thought he would keep for a year or two before returning to his independent artist’s life, his days are filled with constant interaction with students, faculty and administration. Yet it was not until the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all operations at The Art League that Meerfeld was able to reflect on his experience and fully appreciate the importance of human interaction in the creative process.
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A Layered Approach Dual Exhibition: Brian Peters and Philip M. Soucy
Two Pittsburgh artists will bring their work to ClayPlace@Standard for "A Layered Approach," a joint exhibition this coming October. Philip M. Soucy and Brian Peters share a similar technique of stacking clay coils but have a vastly different approach to the method. Soucy’s organic works are built by hand; Peters’ precise pieces are created using a 3-D printer. Each reveals a respect and affection for the material and creates pieces that challenge our ideas about humanity’s history of building and altering its environment.
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