Maybe you haven't heard yet? Something wonderful is hitting Ellenville's Market Street (in addition to a new dance studio, an Italian restaurant, the Ellenville Journal's offices and more) and maybe you want to check it out. During the last week of October, the MarketStreet Art Center will open its doors as a production studio for an artist-in-residence program. In mid-December the center will hold an exhibition and holiday sale of works; it will be our first official event, a celebratory opening event.

But before that happens, several high school students have been invited and chosen by their art teachers to work after school in the studio. Additionally, as the center's first artist-in-residence, I am offering a six-week class, open to the public from November 8 through December 13 from 5p.m. - 8 p.m.

Class fees, including materials, firing and glazing are $180.00. Students will have full access to the studio and equipment during open studio hours, which are Monday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tuesday and Thursday, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Then what? The MarketStreet Art Center plans to close for the holidays and re-open at the end of January with another resident artist, Tim Rowan, a Japanese influenced ceramic sculptor from Stone Ridge who uses indigenous clay in his striking, roughly surfaced vessels and sculptures. (Look for an article on this artist sometime soon.) Tim will also contribute time and teaching through an arrangement with the high school in exchange for six weeks of studio space while producing a new body of work.

What can you do? Connect to us. Join the class where you will learn to make pottery, sculpture and/or architectural ceramics, like tiles and wall pieces.

This is the deal with clay: it's soft and extremely workable while it's wet, but after it's glazed and/or fired, it doesn't corrode, give off harmful gases or break up like concrete. Basically, it's rock like; it will be around for a long time providing it's not smashed or bulldozed and it and the shards impart history for centuries to come. You can never fully prepare for the experience of working with it but I can assure you it will earn your respect — and vice versa. All are welcome to try.

And speaking of respect for clay, about a month ago an art review appeared in the New York Times written by Roberta Smith where she discussed a show at the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea titled "Makers and Modelers: Works in Ceramic" with 31 artists exhibiting a wide gamut of pottery works, figurative pieces and abstract clay body parts to the "show's biggest splash with a crowded tabletop menagerie of objects, mostly vessels…"

The art world, apparently, goes back and forth about clay and whether or not it is an 'art worthy' material. However, I particularly liked Smith's opening paragraph, just before the "but" appeared to shift my mood from hopefully proud to what does she mean — "contemporary ceramics remains capricious". This is what she writes:

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it is also the grandmother of that staff of life called art. This is especially clear with ceramics, the medium at which nearly all cultures excel, spurred by the basic need for things in which to carry water, store grain, serve up victuals….Ceramics has one of the richest histories in the world….We all have our favorites, be it Greek vases or Fiesta ware, Tan courtesans or cookie jars, Edo tea bowls or Southern face jugs, Wedgwood or Russel Wright…….R. Smith, NY Times. 9/7/07.

Is everyone an artist? I don't know. Maybe, but that's not an entirely fair question, considering the hoops artists need to climb through in art schools, museum studies and curatorial feats in order to excel.

Everyone can be a maker. Discover a dynamic relationship between the clay and what it becomes, using clay to awaken ideas and passions, collaborative thinking (family workshops will be offered), or, at the least, develop a healthy addiction to the creative process. And if you're dissatisfied with what you've made, well, just take a hammer to it (use goggles) and in the style of Antonio Gaudi and Spanish architecture, turn your attention to mosaics.

Hope to see you on Market Street.

COMMENTS about this article (2)