Studio Membership Q&A Open House, Saturday, June 22, 11am–3pm
We would like to invite you to join us on Saturday, June 22, from 11:00 am–3:00 pm, for a special Open House dedicated specifically to answering all of your questions about becoming a member of the Staunton Clayground!
Mark your calendars! We will be here to tell you all about it and show you around the studio. There will be refreshments and a door prize of a discount on the first three months of membership for 3 lucky visitors!
Exciting news! It has been an action-packed last six weeks or so since we opened our doors. We’ve run a few classes, helped lots of folks get their hands dirty (in the very best way) and made a lot of new friends!
After this soft opening, we are finally gearing up to launch our Studio Membership program by next month, and we would like to invite you to join us later in June for a special Open House dedicated specifically to answering all of your questions about becoming a member of the Staunton Clayground!
Mark your calendars for Saturday, June 22, from 11:00 am–3:00 pm. We will be here to tell you all about it and show you around the studio, if you haven’t had a chance to see it just yet.
There will be refreshments and a door prize of a discount on the first three months of membership for 3 lucky visitors! Stay a while, ask us any questions you have, and we will answer you or even give you a quick equipment demo if need be!
Also, if you made a garden stake at our last Open House and still haven’t picked it up, you can do that on June 22, too!
We are so excited to be nearly ready for this moment we’ve all been waiting for!
Keep watching this space for updates. See you soon at the Staunton Clayground 😃
A Wonderful Open House, Thanks To You – Plus, The Raffle Winner Is Announced!
The Staunton Clayground’s Open House was a great success! Thanks so much to everyone for coming out to support us on our opening day, get to know our space and play! One attendee won a door prize of a free class, too. Read on to learn more!
Hello to everyone and a very warm welcome to all of you who just signed up for the Staunton Clayground newsletter during our Open House event this past weekend. What a wonderful time we had. Thank you for coming down and supporting us on our very first day! It was a beautiful April afternoon and, with so many great activities going on around town, we’re very glad and grateful that you decided to spend some of it with us ❤️
Kids of all ages enjoyed painting ceramic garden stakes for Earth Day (photos by @octobergracemedia)
Our “paint-your-own” garden stakes project, in honor of Earth Day, was very popular, with visitors of all ages enjoying the fun. We are working on glazing those and should have them ready to fire soon! We’ll keep you posted on the progress. Check out a taste of the fun above, and the whole gallery of photos can be viewed at the bottom of this post!
From the Staunton Clayground to a garden near you, this spring! (Photo by @octobergracemedia)
Live wheel-throwing demos ran pretty much all afternoon. The first to sit down at the wheel and show everyone what it’s all about was local potter Justin Hershey, who was volunteering to help us out for the day. Check out more of his work on his Instagram page, @potpotfrit.
Local potter Justin Hershey, demonstrating some of the amazing things a potter’s wheel can do (photos by @octobergracemedia)
For the second half of the afternoon, our very own Nicole Hill took over. You may know her by her Instagram handle, Eyerman.art, under which she exhibited at last fall’s Art in the Park, right here in Staunton. She will be one of our regular instructors, and is so far scheduled to teach a Slab Geometric Vases workshop in May and June and an Intermediate Wheel Throwing class in June and July, and has lots more ideas and skills to share!
Staunton Clayground instructor Nicole Hill of @eyerman.art shows future potters just how fun the wheel can be (photos by @octobergracemedia)
Meanwhile, we had a blast telling everyone all about the plans we have for the Staunton Clayground, from classes to workshops, upcoming events and the soon-to-come membership program (look for more info about that in May! We expect to be able to open up to members around Memorial Day).
Founder and Director, Cary (right in the lower photo), and Studio Manager, Jennifer (left), enjoy finally sharing all of their planning and hard work with the Staunton community (photos by @octobergracemedia)
Last but not least, we have to thank our fantastic photographer, Cindy Fellows of October Grace Media, for taking such wonderful photos of this very special event (check out her website at the link above or her awesome Instagram page @octobergracemedia), as well as Magdalena Bake, who helped to provide the delicious refreshments.
Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… and the winning ticket number is…
The lucky winner!
We have a raffle winner! One lucky Open House attendee has won one free class or workshop of their choice, to be booked on our shop before ringing in the new year on December 31, 2024. Winning ticket #1506224, be on the lookout for an email with more details!
Open House attendees paint their bisque-fired ceramic garden stake with different colors of underglaze (Photo by @octobergracemedia)
Stay tuned for news about garden stake glazing, firing and pick-up!
If you want to check out more photos of the event, you can see the full gallery by @octobergracemedia below, and, if you didn’t have a chance to play this time around, don’t worry. You can check out our Classes, Courses & Workshops page, and we’ll be planning plenty more fun soon!
Keep watching this space!
Open House Tomorrow From 12–5 PM! Plus, we still have spots available in our Intro to Clay class, starting Monday evening!
Come celebrate the opening of the Staunton Clayground pottery studio at our Open House! There will be a chance to win a door prize of one pottery class or workshop, tour our studio, see live wheel throwing demos, enjoy refreshments by Pizzeria Luca and Magdalena Bake, and, in honor of Earth Day, paint your own ceramic garden stake. Plus, there are still spots available in our first class, starting Monday! Let’s clay!
That’s right! It is finally time for our Open House! We are officially opening our doors for business, and we can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on with you!
Come celebrate the opening of the Staunton Clayground pottery studio at our Open House tomorrow from 12–5 pm! There will be a chance to win a door prize of one pottery class or workshop, tour our studio, see live wheel throwing demos, enjoy refreshments by Pizzeria Luca and Magdalena Bake, and, in honor of Earth Day, paint your own ceramic garden stake (we’ll fire it for you for pick-up later).
Still wondering how to find us? We are located in “The Cellar” at 123 W. Frederick St., with our main entrance around the back of the post office building. Free parking spots for “The Cellar” are available in the lot at 116 N. Lewis St. There is also plenty of on-street parking nearby, and we are just a few blocks’ walk from the public parking lots (also free on weekends) at the Wharf and on South New St.
In other exciting news, our first class, “Introduction to Clay,” co-taught by Cary and Jennifer, is kicking off next week, on Monday evening, to be precise!
An Introduction to Clay: Basics of Wheel and Handbuilding will consist of nine 2-hour sessions (18 hours total): Monday and Thursday evenings, from 6:00 – 8:00, (April 22, 2024 – May 20, 2024)
“Come and learn the basics of working with clay! If you are an absolute beginner or haven’t been back to the pottery studio since that class you took in school, then this course is for you. The goal of this pottery class is to learn the basics of functional pottery and have several pieces to show for it by the time the course has concluded. Over nine 2-hour sessions, students will experiment with hand building using slabs and molds and with using the wheel to make basic pottery shapes such as small cups, bowls and mugs.
Everything we make will be functional and oven, microwave, dishwasher and food safe!”
We’ve got a whole bunch of other classes lined up, too, with more coming soon. Please don’t forget to visit our online shop or our Classes, Courses & Workshops page and check them out!
We hope you can come and see us! We are more than ready to finally invite you to “Come and clay!”
See you soon!
More New Wheels, Glaze Making, Our First Kiln Firing and... Just One Week To Go Until Our Open House!
We have unboxed our last wheels, bisque fired all 300 test tiles, mixed up all 8 of our colored glazes… and our Open House is just one week away! Now to glaze all those tiles…
It has been a very busy week here at the Staunton Clayground! We have been working like mad trying to get everything ready for our Open House next weekend and first classes after that, which we are so excited about! (Don’t forget, our very first “Intro to Clay” class starts on Monday, April 22, and there are still spots available! More on that below.)
Let’s clay!
First off, we unboxed and set up our new member wheels, a Shimpo Whisper and a Speedball Clay Boss. They have larger wheel heads (14”) and can handle more weight, and having them means that members will always have a guaranteed space to come and work in, separate from any ongoing class (if you recall, we have a bank of 9 wheels for classes already set up and ready to go)! Aren’t they enticing? I can’t wait to take them each out for a spin, pun fully intended ;-)
Studio Manager at work!
Then we started in on preparing our line-up of glazes! Jennifer got suited up and, over two days, got all eight of our colored glazes mixed (she actually used a drill with a mixer attachment, but the whisk was more photogenic).
Meanwhile, Cary has been hard at work finishing making kiln cookies, a task we’ve both been hard at work at for weeks, sometimes with the help of friends and family! For those of you who don’t know much about pottery firing, kiln cookies are not nummy treats, although we certainly could have used some of those more than once over the last couple of weeks!
They work kind of like coasters with a mug of tea: you put your glazed pieces on them while they’re in the kiln, because if the glaze runs down and drips, this way you end up with molten glass-like gloop on the disposable cookie instead of on the big, much-harder-to-replace kiln shelf.
Then we got to unload the kiln!
Cary got to lift the lid. It was an exciting moment, since this was the first firing we’d ever gotten a chance to do in our new studio!
Can’t wait to start dipping these in our brand new glazes!
Needless to say, we were as close to jumping up and down as we could be in a confined space filled with fragile equipment :-) In the end, all but one tile made it and now we are ready for glazing!
It’s going to be a very fun and busy weekend! With lots more to do before the Open House, just one week away!! We can’t wait to see you there! Not sure how to get there?
Just drop us a line if you still have any questions about how to find us!
And remember, our very first class, an “Intro to Clay,” starts on April 22, the Monday after our Open House. It will cover the basics of wheel throwing and handbuilding, and will be co-taught by Cary and Jennifer. There are still some spots left if you’re interested, and don’t forget to check out the rest of our class line-up for spring and summer. There are quite a few already, but we’re still adding to it! New and exciting workshops are still coming!
So keep watching this space!
Did Someone Say, “One-Thousand Pounds of Clay?”
Yes, we did it, we ordered 1000 pounds of clay. I think we’re ready for pretty much anything, including our first students!
Yup, that was us! 1,000 pounds of clay, delivered today, stacked against our wall and ready for our first students!
Did someone say, “first students?” Yup, that was us, too! Classes will be posted later this week, so keep watching this space!
Member wheels await unboxing :-)
Oh and, by the way, our last two wheels have arrived! These two join our line-up as dedicated member-area wheels alongside our nine student wheels and our kick wheel. Pics on the way as soon as we unpack!
Woohoo!
Wheel Unboxing Day!
We unboxed our first nine wheels today and plugged them in. It was a beautiful thing to see them spin! Can’t wait to play…
It was a long time coming, but the electric for our main bank of nine wheels was finally ready, so at long last we got to have our first unboxing day! Oh, what fun it was to set them all up and see them spin!
Our nine new pottery wheels are plugged in and ready to go!
The bank includes four student wheels on each side, capped on the far end by the teacher’s wheel. We will have three additional wheels for members, too, in a dedicated area, although members will be free to use these ones as well when no classes are going on.
We can’t wait to play! We finally got our running water… which is great news! Still waiting on some other furniture and equipment. Should be coming soon.
Watch this space!
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