Earth Works
Posted September 20, 2007
Studio 1219 celebrates pottery and glass at the Fire & Ice festival. This weekend’s Fire & Ice Pottery & Glass Festival at Studio 1219 isn’t the only event in Michigan to focus exclusively on pottery and glass as art forms. Royal Oak, for example, has its prestigious Clay and Glass Festival in June.
“That’s the only other one I’m familiar with,” said Port Huron glass artist Michelle Corsich, who has had a booth at the Royal Oak festival for the past few years.
But unlike the Royal Oak festival, Fire & Ice is not going to be an art fair. There will be a few artists, including Corsich, displaying and selling their work, but the focus of the festival is on letting people experience what goes into making a ceramic pot or glass bead. That makes it unique, Corsich said.
“I don’t think there’s any (other) venue where people can participate” in the process, she said.
That’s the whole idea, said Maureen Scallen, Studio 1219’s educational director.
“It’s an educational festival,” Scallen said. “We’re trying to get the community involved (and to) get them a little dirty.”
Audience members will be able to try their hand at throwing clay at the Pottery Olympics, which will have four to five events each day involving novices and experts.
There will be competitions to see who can turn a pot the fastest, who can build the tallest vase and who can do it blindfolded. Volunteers will be encouraged to come up on stage and make coil ropes and a house-of-cards-like structure out of slabs of clay. Teams from local businesses and organizations will have a sculpture competition.
Court Street between Military and Seventh streets and Sixth Street between Union and Wall streets will be shut down for the outdoor festival. Because parking at the studio is limited, Scallen recommends parking in the city lots at Sixth and Pine streets, the parking structure at the Harborside Office Center or at Vantage Point.
Besides the Pottery Olympics, there will be a Children’s Activity Tent where children can make their own stained-glass project, soap carving or sculptures out of modeling clay. They’ll also be able to decorate plain pottery pieces with acrylic paint.
At the Arts in Action Tent, artists from as close as Port Huron and as far as Bowling Green, Ohio, will demonstrate wheel throwing, wood carving and jewelry making.
In the Raku Yard, visitors can glaze pottery, then watch as it’s fired in the Japanese style that places glowing hot pottery in containers full of straw.
“It’s a very exciting process because things go up in flame,” Scallen said.
Grace Episcopal Church is participating, too, offering tours of its historic stained-glass windows and sponsoring a sidewalk chalk activity.
The studio’s newest tenant, the Blue Water Musician’s Network, is organizing music during the event.
If the festival is successful, it could become an annual event, Scallen said.
“I hope (visitors) learn to appreciate ceramic, glass and wood arts,” she said. “There’s a long process that goes into those arts. It’s a time-consuming thing. It helps to understand how much time ... and creativity goes into a piece of work.”
Dennis Snyder, a member of the studio’s potters co-op who is chairman of the Pottery Olympics, said he knows people come into the studio and see a pot for sale for $30 and don’t understand why it’s more expensive than a mass-produced pot at a big-box store.
“A lot of people don’t know what it takes to make a pot or turn a bowl of wood,” he said. At the festival “they’ll be able to see a pot being made up on stage and how hard it is.
“We’re hoping to inspire new artists. We think it’s really important for our area to get people involved, and the studio is a great place for those people to meet and learn.”
Originally published by Bill Chapin on September 14, 2007
Spin Magazine
