Featured Articles

  • Tom Turnbull: Just the Beginning

    Part of what makes Standard Clay an appealing company is the way it mirrors the arts society in its company culture of family and community.  Both Ceramic Supply Chicago and Ceramic Supply Inc. in the New York area have dedicated staff members who foster relationships with the artists who purchase their products, building a communal group with a shared purpose.  The central Pittsburgh business propagates this spirit, sustained by generations of the Turnbull family.  Headed by Jim, who succeeded his father James, Sr., and managed by his son Graham, Standard is synonymous with the Turnbull name.  Jim’s vibrant personality makes connections between ceramic artists throughout the world while Graham steadily mans the helm.  But the Turnbull story includes another son of James, Sr., a prodigal son of sorts, who completes the triangle as an accomplished and distinguished ceramic artist.  A young man who set off to find his own way, Tom built a life that always came back to clay and is now facing a journey that is launching him on a retrospective trip through his life and ideas that is pertinent not only to him but to anyone who has pondered the meaning of a life in the arts.

  • Brian Grow: Educator and Maker

    Brian Grow is a DC area potter whose long journey in teaching and creating led him to an organization that fits perfectly with his artistic vision.  The Director of Ceramics at The Art League, in Alexandria, VA, Grow says that the vitality and variety of artmaking at this august, long-standing institution matches his own thought processes.  “The rotating schedule of classes,” he explains, “not only in pottery, but in all the disciplines, makes for stimulating conversations in the hallways among instructors, artists, and students.”

  • PennOhio Clay Guild: Nurturing Artists

    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.

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

    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.

  • Don Seymour: A Life Landscape

    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.

  • The Art League of Long Island: All About the Art

    It goes unsaid that for an artist, the Art is the thing.  Regardless of how a sculptor, a painter, or a potter chooses to live out a creative life, the art is always front and center.  Behind that choice, however, is the big job of making it work – the management of the arts.  The studio potter must find a market; the pottery school must recruit a student body; the gallery owner must balance the books.  Things generally move along smoothly with an occasional bump here and there, but late last September, unprecedented rainstorms and historic flooding collided head-on with the Art League of Long Island.  The organization’s management team launched into an emergency response that was buoyed by the artists and the wider community’s determination to keep the Art alive.

  • Amy Burk: Lancaster Arts Engineer

    An hour west of Philadelphia, the small city of Lancaster is a hub of creative energy stoked by a multitude of arts organizations.  Potter Amy Burk is a longtime Lancaster native who keeps many engines running with her involvement in the area arts scene. Her Amy Burk Pottery has been a local fixture since her circuitous route back to her hometown in 2002.  Today, Burk integrates her creative vision and keen business sense in a successful functional pottery production trade.

  • North Hills Art Center: A Suburban Gem

    A person looking for the arts in Pittsburgh is likely to find a play or a concert in the downtown cultural district or a gallery or a museum class in the Oakland university area.  But residents of the city’s northern hills have a rare jewel in the North Hills Art Center (NHAC).  For over sixty years, this institution has served the community, inspiring creativity in children and adults through expert instruction in a full gamut of media.  Board of Directors President, Diane Pontoriero says, “Our mission is to bring what the arts do for us to everyone in the community.”

  • The Successful Potter: A Collective Model

    The impulse that is at the heart of every potter is to play with clay.  This seminal desire to immerse oneself in one’s medium fuels the creative process but does little to guide the artist toward a sustainable way of living.  Teaching and marketing are the usual solutions, but often become as time-consuming as the art they serve.  Lisa Howard, a Boston area potter, over three decades of creating, has succeeded in incorporating these necessary tasks into an organic model based on a strong community of makers and buyers.  Her local pottery studio + gallery is a nexus in the Boston area for artists to display and sell their work, for students to perfect their skills, and for clients to expand their collections and increase their knowledge of the arts.

  • A Potter for the 21st Century

    After months of lockdowns and isolation amid a global pandemic, Indianapolis potter Sarah Anderson bought a small Serro Scotty camper and took to the highway.  This 20-something graduate of Ball State University recruited her dog Pip and her friend Merrat Metzger and began a journey that brought her to new vistas and built a real community out of virtual connections.

  • Veteran Educator Adjudicates Standard Clay’s High School Exhibition

    Standard Clay has a long history of encouraging and showcasing local high school artists in the gallery at Clay Place @ Standard.  The current show features works in clay from thirteen schools and runs through April 28.  A reception was held on March 29 for the students, their teachers, and their families and friends.  Under the discerning eye of judge Susan T. Philips, the works were assessed and rated, with awards granted to the three best student works, along with one to the best over-all school.  Standard Clay is grateful for Phillips’ expertise and willingness to serve in the role of judge.

  • East Wheeling Clayworks: The New Artist/Entrepreneur

    Adam and Beth Bedway stand at the intersection of many roads for today’s new potters.  This Wheeling, West Virginia couple are the owners and founders of East Wheeling Clayworks, an enterprise that has grown out of their love of clay and is fed by a determination and commitment to the growth of small businesses in small economies.  Both Adam, 40, and Beth, 37, majored in the arts but sacrificed full-time artistic pursuit to ensure a sustainable living.   Like so many of their generation, they found the traditional work model unfulfilling.  With careful consideration and planning, they chose an alternate route.