Featured Articles

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

July 03, 2024

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

June 09, 2024

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

March 15, 2024

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.