Creating With Clay Spokane Potters Guild Is Made Up Of Artists Of All Ages, All Skill Levels

The YWCA pottery studio was a warm “home” for nearly 25 years to community artisans who gathered for classes and camaraderie. But the kilns went cold in 1995 when the Y needed the pottery space for other programs.

As down to earth as the clay they use, the displaced ceramists shaped themselves into the Spokane Potters Guild. The 20 founding members bought the Y’s equipment, leased a good space, and planned a menu of basic classes.

On April 12, the guild celebrates its first re-birthday with an open house and open arms. They hope to attract members of all skill levels and from all walks of life.

“We come from everywhere and we are all ages,” said Mary Cordes, guild founder and longtime arts proponent. “Some of us are high school students, and some of us are in our 70s and 80s. What we share is our interest in art, and the free flow of ideas that happens in groups. You could say it’s a kind of magic,” she said.

Cordes said that fellowship draws members just as strongly as the drive to create.

A second founding member is architect and potter Dennis Young. “The essence of the guild is semi-professional. Some in the guild are capable of being full-time professional potters like myself, and others of us just … appreciate pottery both as a joy and activity - but not in a way that would threaten someone who does it full-time for a living,” he said.

“We’re producTIVE,” said Cordes, “but not producTION.”

The guild offers classes taught by volunteer instructors in handbuilding, sculpture and wheelthrowing. But the students say they’ve learned skills that can’t be gleaned from any textbook.

At one Wednesday morning class, 10 people chatted amiably as each slapped and poked and coaxed their ideas into shapes. One potter rolled clay flat like pie dough to make the conical roof of her birdhouse. A man sat quietly at the canvas-covered table and pinched miniature ears onto a toy-sized animal sculpture.

Another worker picked up a wooden paddle and smacked a huge gray lump. “Talk about getting ride of your frustrations!” she laughed. “This is better than kneading bread dough.” She pointed to the lump and said firmly, “You ARE going to be a garden troll.”

Hunched over a spinning turntable, a law clerk pushed palms-down on a wad of slick mud. “This looks easy in the movies,” she muttered, “but one false move, and you mess up.”

She said the frustrations of glaze goofs and breakage in firing are offset by the friendship she finds here. She arranged her work schedule around the class time. “It’s more that I come to hang out with the group. It’s a bonus to play with clay.”

Marie Pizelo discovered she could express unspoken feelings when she handled clay. “I’d been abused when I was a very small child,” she said, “and trying to talk about it just didn’t work.” When Pizelo signed up at the YWCA for a clay therapy class, she opened up a new channel of communication. She continues her artwork through the Pottery Guild, and donates many of her sculptures to social service agencies such as CrossWalk, Spokane Child Abuse Network (SCAN) and the Women’s Drop-in Center.

“I could make these things that said what I felt inside,” she said. “It was painful at the beginning, but I was able to work through the hostility and use the anger to change things. Art needs to express something going on inside before it has much passion.”

Only as a sidenote did Pizelo mention she also suffered minor strokes in recent years. “It hasn’t slowed me down much, but I find I mostly hold the clay with my left hand now, and do the work with the right.”

Transformation and renewal also are at the heart of the art made by others in the guild. John Mendel retired from a career as a chemist at Hanford five years ago. He was attracted to printmaking at Columbia Basin College. “The print class was full,” he said, “but there was room in a handbuilding class - so I guess you could say I’m here by accident,” he smiled. “I moved to Spokane, joined this group, and I’ve been working at it ever since.” Mendel’s explorations in clay range from large wall-hung sculptures made in sections, to fragile forms he can hold in one hand.

A teacher for 22 years and a Sister of Providence for 40, Marita Chesnut smiled at the gentle ribbing her fellow potters directed her way. “You can’t tell who the nuns are any more since they quit wearing those habits,” said a potter. “Now they’re like unmarked cars.”

Restructure in religious orders “mainstreamed” women like Chesnut who found apostolates outside the convent walls. “I had come from so much silence and I’ve been so bashful all my life,” she said, “that it was hard for me to learn how to make a friend and how to be a friend.” At mid-career, Chesnut took a course in Creation Spirituality that awakened the artist in her. “I learned that art is a way of creating yourself,” she explained, “as well as a way to be in touch with God.”

She applied her artistry first to liturgy and then to social action ministry. “Remember all those banners we had in church?” she smiled. Chesnut moved from banners to clay in 1986, and had her first art show at the YWCA the next year. Shortly after, a hospital in Great Falls, Mont., commissioned her to create a complex installation work which exhausted her.

“I had a real desert of creativity for a few years after that - I’d used up all my energy, and I felt guilty I wasn’t producing anything.” But Chesnut recharged her creative batteries by continuing her alliance with the “Y” potters, themselves transformed into the Pottery Guild. “They were so supportive and encouraging, and before long I was creating all the things that were waiting to come out,” she said.

She worked a ball of clay in her hands, and spoke softly. “I am more at home with myself because of their encouragement. It just fills me with hope.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MEMBERSHIP INFO Spokane Potters Guild Studio & Gallery 2619 N. Hamilton (former site of the Riblet Tramworks) Open house: April 12, 10 a.m.4 p.m.

For membership information, contact Mary Cordes, 838-8412. Classes are taught in handbuilding, wheelthrowing and sculpture, Tuesdays, 7-9 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-noon and 7-9 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m.noon. Class fees are $56/eightweek session (includes two hours of open studio time per week). Clay fee is $23 for 25 pounds clay (includes glazing and firing). Open studio hours: Mondays, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Open studio fee is $25 per month, plus clay fee. The Spokane Potters Guild open house is April 12, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.