Featured Articles

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.

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.

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.

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.