Tucked away in a cozy studio on East Main Street, the Clay Club fosters a space for craft, collaboration, and creativity. Sharing their studio with Wesleyan Potters, a local ceramics studio which, despite the name, is not affiliated with the University, the club provides students with the opportunity to try out pottery making regardless of experience. As a new club founded in the spring 2022, Clay Club has gained immense popularity on campus, revealing the passion that the student body shares for all things wheel-related. 

The cathartic opportunity to play with clay commences on Fridays at 2 p.m. and runs until 5 p.m. After a stressful week of exams and essays, the group gathers under the guidance of studio leaders Natalie Sweet ’25, Helen Townsend ’24, and Puji Masireddy ’26. 

“I’m working on my thesis right now, and I wanted to involve ceramics somehow just because that’s the medium I think I’m most comfortable with,” Townsend said. “I did clay all throughout middle and high school, and I’ve worked in studios before, and I was really interested in the idea of getting clay on campus.” 

Similarly, Masireddy found an immediate connection with clay through her spontaneous introduction to the medium in high school. 

“I took this 3D art class, and we did a bunch of different sculpture things, but we had a unit on clay, and after that I didn’t want to really do anything else,” Masireddy said. “I was like ‘I just want to do clay and ceramics.’ There’s a local studio near me back home, so I took a few workshops there over the summer. This past summer, I was also there volunteering a bit.” 

While taking their first ceramics class during high school in New York City, Sweet found the studio where the classes were held particularly endearing. They fell in love with the way their studio housed every stage of the ceramics process, from pottery wheels to glazes, and the rotating co-operative system fostered a collaborative environment. All the aspects they had enjoyed so much about their first studio experience turned out to be central to ceramics studios all over. 

“And then as I did more research about ceramics and stopped by other studios and started seeing [them] all around New York, I was like, ‘Oh, this is just how ceramics works,” Sweet said. 

Later, as a first-year at the University, Sweet met Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art Professor Kate TenEyck and struck up a conversation about the history of ceramics programs and access at the University. 

“We talked about ceramics and what used to be here, because there used to be a studio here, but that was always attached to a professor,” Sweet said.  

According to an article in The Argus entitled “Ceramics Program, Chipped Away, Retains Legacy,” former Professor of Ceramics Mary Risley worked as the sole ceramics instructor until her retirement in 1996. Shortly after, the University announced its decision to permanently close the popular ceramics program as part of a university-wide reduction in positions. 

Eager to experience the joy of ceramics during their time at the University, Sweet understood that they would have to organize it themselves. TenEyck connected Sweet to other students interested in ceramics, including Matty Shields ’25, and they started planning. 

“[One of our main goals] was starting a program at Wesleyan, because we weren’t naive, we knew that it’s gonna take a long time for a studio to be built here,” Sweet said. “Matty and Eiley [Doyle ’25], some of the other leaders of Clay Club, were taking classes at the [Wesleyan Potters] studio in town.” 

By participating in these classes, the founders began to dream of a University-affiliated program. Shields, Sweet, and Doyle contacted the then-director of Wesleyan Potters, piloting the first cohort of the program in spring 2022. 

However, even a well-run program like the Clay Club cannot fully satisfy the exponentially growing interest in clay and ceramics among the student body.

“The first semester, I was joking that our acceptance rate was lower than Wesleyan’s,” Sweet said. “We had around 70 applicants, and we could only pick seven.”

The group only has the capacity to admit a fraction of the students who apply each semester, and club members can only participate for one semester to allow as many students as possible to get an opportunity. Because it operates through a non-University space, the club is very conscious about respecting the Wesleyan Potters’ community, which means limiting their cohort to around 16 people.

“The last thing that Middletown needs is a bunch of Wesleyan students coming into a very established Middletown place and making it their own,” Sweet said. “It is a really big and devoted community for a lot of people, and our intention is not to take over the space.”

Club meetings provide a space for students to not only learn about different pottery techniques but also play around with their own projects. Here, the studio leaders help make the gooey magic happen.

“In the beginning we’ll just do introductions and then go into whatever technique that we want to teach that day,” Masireddy said. “The rest of the time is for members to experiment, be it hand building or wheel throwing.”

Townsend reiterated that the studio leaders work actively to make the members feel comfortable, learn new skills, and enjoy playing with clay. 

“We want to make sure everyone has all the knowledge they need to succeed,” Townsend said. “It’s really frustrating to learn how to center for the first time, which is when you put all the clay in the center of the wheel when you’re wheel throwing. It’s the first step you need to do in order to make something so it’s not wobbling all around. So we usually [do] 15 to 20 minute demos with one of us on duty, or two of us for the first few sessions.” 

Sabrina Seltzer ’24, a previous participant of the Clay Club’s program, recalled the challenges of working with clay. However, under the tutelage of the hard-working studio leaders, Seltzer conquered the clay.

“It wasn’t until I was actually attempting to use the wheel that I realized how hard it truly was,” Seltzer said. “I kind of thought that I would be a pro after an hour, but it took at least three sessions to be able to center my clay. It’s very difficult, a lot of people didn’t know what they were doing; the excellent instruction really helped us to go far.”

Sweet described the ways in which the structure of the meetings has changed since the club’s founding, noting that experience has allowed the leaders to develop a more effective method of teaching ceramics techniques.

“I feel like having a set tutorial system [has helped],” Sweet said. “I would do the tutorial during my sophomore year, and people just wouldn’t really listen and then asked me to demonstrate the same 10 minutes [later]. So just having this set time for [tutorials] was really better.”

Currently, the Clay Club receives funding from the University, which they use to pay Wesleyan Potters in order to use space. 

“We’ve been getting funding, paid for [by] Wesleyan through the clay club,” Townsend explained. “And then we pay Wesleyan Potters directly. So like, that runs pretty smoothly now, which is nice. Because at first we didn’t really know what we needed and how much to get.” However, all the leaders expressed the implementation of a permanent ceramics studio on campus as being their ultimate goal.

However, Clay Club is looking towards a brighter, bigger, and clay-ier future. One of Clay Club’s main goals for the future is continuing to host larger, campus-wide events that can include the entire Wesleyan ceramics community. Townsend explained how students can become involved with these workshops, or find other ways to incorporate clay into their lives in the Middletown area.

“People can join Clay Club on WesNest [to hear about] events and workshops for the broader Wesleyan community,” Townsend said. “And we’re trying to make those more frequent. We had a little pinch pot and paint party the other month, which was fun, and people just got to come and discuss clay stuff and all that. We’re trying to expand upon that and maybe have an artist talk next semester with a professor on campus that’s involved in ceramics.”

Likewise, Townsend wants to remind clay-seekers that there are other opportunities to get involved in ceramics outside of the University.  

“Matty and Eiley, before they started Clay Club, took a class at [Wesleyan Potters] that was paid for by Wesleyan Potters,” Townsend said. “That’s another way students can get involved with clay. You can also take a class there. And they also have a scholarship program that they applied for and got, which is like through Wesleyan Potters rather than through Wesleyan itself.” 

Those hoping to snag one of the coveted spots in the semester-length program should keep their eyes out for the spring application.

“We’re super open to all skill levels, because we teach the basics in the beginning,” Masireddy said. “So I would recommend definitely signing up on WesNest, because we’ll send out emails and whatnot about different events. And our spring session sign up sheet is, I’m assuming, going to be sent out soon. So keep a look out for that.”

Eugenia Shakhnovskaya can be reached at eshakhnovska@wesleyan.edu.

Ella Henn can be reached at ehenn@wesleyan.edu.

Anna Thomas can be reached at asthomas@wesleyan.edu.

Nicki Klar can be reached at nklar@wesleyan.edu.