The scene at Peter Lane’s Scholes Street studio in Brooklyn looks like a mother’s nightmare – a group of boys on their hands and knees, pants and sleeves stained brown, a massive pile of mud. But these aren’t boys and this is not mud. They are Lane’s team of ceramicists and this is clay. The group is working on a huge architectural installation for a client. This New York based ceramic artist works on an unprecedented scale, creating architectural features for private and commercial spaces, along with furniture and decorative work. His fidelity to the nature of clay guides the process and the finished work, as he manipulates the material through a journey that magnifies its most essential elements in the final product.
History is a record of evolution, the continual movement forward of the activities of humankind. Occasionally, those gradual changes coalesce into a major paradigm shift, spurring a revolutionary change that reverberates throughout all aspects of human life. Out of this change come new ideas, new communities, and new institutions. Greenwich House, in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was born out of the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 20th century and continues to adapt to meet the needs of its community as a new century and a new revolution challenge the well-being and happiness of today’s populaces. Helping to meet these needs is Greenwich House Pottery’s new Director, Caitlin Brown, who comes to Greenwich House from New York State College of Ceramics and Performing Arts at Alfred University.
While most artists would argue that the arts and culture have a positive effect on the world, it is often difficult to articulate concrete examples of how things are changed for the better through art. For a young man who grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, the benefits of a culture soaked in education and the arts provided resources for learning and self-realization that launched him into a creative exploration of ideas and purpose, one that circles back into his community, further strengthening its strong foundations.