Working in a Community Studio: My thoughts

My sister is a member at Cup Ceramics, which is a community pottery studio located in Hereford. While doing ceramics in Canada ive been working mostly in isolation, although this has many benefits it can also limit you in to what you think is possible and from learning from your peers. Some benefits of working alone include having absolutly no distraction, your focus is fully on the task at hand.

Ive found that being surrounded by other potters working on their own art can bring a great deal of inspiration, gives me some more drive to experiment with processes i dont normally use, such as hand building. Like any community experiance you feel like your part of a bigger collection of people, you feel welcome like your meant to be here doing this thing, surrounded by like minded people. Kind of like the same feeling when i go to music events, as long as the crowd is being present in the moment you feel super connected to people you dont even know. I plan to put in some hours in this studio as its my only link to doing ceramics at this moment in time. The pricing isnt too bad either, for membership my sister pays £80 a month, this entitles her to 4 hours per week. Now 4 hours when your making pottery isnt a lot of time. Id be doing a few things differently next time, like wedging out all the clay ready before the session, this will save a good chunk of time so that i can concentrate on just using the equipment. I bought a bag of recycled clay for £7 and i threw 10 mugs and 2 larger cylinders.

Id highly recommend a commnity studio to any potter experianced or not this is a great place to hang out and enjoy the love of clay. More oppertunities can come from working in these environments, such as collabrorating with other artists, being invited to makers markets and so on. They also have a cafe which they sell pottery from memebers at the studio, how cool!