Claude W. Smith III, Silver City artist
Workshops catering to wide variety of ages, interests, and levels of expertise highlight Silver City €™s fourth annual CLAY Festival, presently underway through August 2. Topics range from raku firing to salt glazing, painting pictures of ceramic vessels to replicating prehistoric pottery forms €”and more.
Facilitators include widely exhibited and collected Minnesota ceramic artist Marko Fields; Ancestral Puebloan pottery expert Dr. Eric Blinman; still-life painter and art historian Turid Pedersen, raised in Norway but residing in New Mexico since the 1970s; celebrated Pennsylvania teacher, writer, and potter Jack Troy; Arizona-based Andy Ward, known for his recreations of prehistoric Southwest pottery types; and Bill and Athena Steen, directors of the nonprofit Canelo Project, known for their artistic clay-and-lime wall finishes and straw bale building backgrounds. CLAYplay hands-on workshops for children will be led at the Silver City and Bayard libraries by versatile artist/teacher Zoe Wolfe, while clay artist Beth Menczer oversees a CLAYplayWorkshop at the Gila library for adults and young people. Each of these CLAYplay classes, hosted by the three libraries and supported financially by Well Fargo Bank, will focus on our region €™s rich Hispanic heritage and the children will be making garden ollas (unglazed ceramic jars).
CLAY Festival 2015 brings together artists, families, young people, adventurers, educators, entrepreneurs, and life-long learners to experience and explore all things clay. This year €™s other major presenters include renowned Santa Clara Pueblo ceramic sculptor Roxanne Swentzell and Mexican husband-and-wife potters Carla MartÃnez Vargas and Diego Valles.
Other Festival activities involve artist demonstrations and receptions, an international juried exhibition, guided tours, Conversations in Clay lectures, music, dancing, films, yoga, a mud pie contest, special outdoor events, a poker tournament, a mural dedication, the CLAY Gala Fundraiser, and a CLAYfest Market that features clay-centric vendors. Most events are free and geared to the general public. This New Mexico TRUE event is unique in its recognition of the crucial role that such a simple, humble, and versatile material plays in the state €™s art, history, and culture. No place or people in the state are untouched by adobe, mud, fired brick, terra cotta, ceramics