One moment in time... We are just now coming to, and verging onto a path towards “reality” after the sweet fever dream of NCECA in Detroit… It was truly a gift to show so many ceramic sweet hearts from far and wide our little studio and to share in the love of our wild and beautiful city. We were so supported and held by our friends, making sure we met our basic needs in the weeks leading up to it all, and collectively checking off the long list of tasks to make the vision a fruition. We felt honored to play and dream with new and old friends from far and wide during the wood firing, the Alfred alumni party, the Trophy Life award ceremony and all the in-betweens. Thank you all for coming out and supporting us and being part of livin this dream, we hope you had so much fun, we sure did!!
The shout outs are truly too many to list.
THANK YOU to all who helped out, from the deepest, pinkest depths of our hearts, we overflow with love and admiration for our community. <3 v
Film photos by @drew__werd
Wow y’all! Welcome to Detroit 😎
@nceca is coming to Detroit for its 60th annual conference this upcoming week, and we’re beyond excited to see pals old and new and help welcome the extended ceramics community to our beautiful city!
At Ceramics School we’ll be hosting the Ceramaganza! A three day long program of festivities that will feature:
A Double Decker wood kiln firing - its third firing! This time in the catenary arch!
Firing will finish on the night of Wednesday the 25th and we’ll unload the kiln on the afternoon of Friday the 27th. Please come by the firing on Wednesday and throw a log in! We might have hot dogs..
Honor Shed - Our honor system gallery featuring works by Virginia Torrence and Henry Crissman will be fully stocked and open for self service in our garden
The Sliding Scale Pottery Sale will feature an amazing array of ceramic works for sale by all us Ceramics Schoolers, and tons of Ceramics School Merch! Sweatshirts, tshirts, hats, stickers, and more! All sales will benefit a super huge and special and exciting new project that we’ll be officially announcing at NCECA! We also made a studio news paper that is pretty magic…
Trophy Life - an open call exhibition of artist made trophies. Intake of trophies will be on Wednesday the 25th from noon-10pm. Opening reception/ award ceremony 7-9pm on Friday the 28th.
See you soon!! <3
*Open Call ! Open Call ! Open Call ! *
This is an invitation to participate in and/or attend “TROPHY LIFE,” an open-call exhibition of artist-made trophies at Ceramics School, presented as part of the upcoming 2026 NCECA conference in Detroit, March 25-28.
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As with all of our open-call exhibitions, there is no application, just bring your work to be part of the show! Make a trophy for a dear friend, an award for the wind, your favorite swimming spot, an honorable mention, a note to self, best in show, a thank you - make a trophy for whatever, whoever, whenever, and wherever you think deserves celebration and recognition. All media accepted!
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We will intake art trophies on Wednesday, March 25, from noon–9 PM at 2692 Carpenter St., Hamtramck, MI (approximately a 12-minute drive from the convention center for you out of towners). That day will also be the kick off of our Ceramaganza! that will feature a Sliding-Scale Pottery Sale fundraiser, all sorts of cool merch, and we’ll be firing off our wood kiln that evening. We’ll also be open that Thursday from noon to 5pm, and that Friday from noon-10pm.
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The “TROPHY LIFE” exhibition reception and collectively produced award ceremony will take place on Friday, March 27, from 7–9 PM (following the unloading of our double-decker wood kiln earlier that day).
Deinstall and pickup of of trophies is from 9pm-10pm that Friday evening, and from 9am-noon on Saturday the 28th.
Can’t wait to see what everyone makes and to see everyone here!
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We are not liable for any loss or damage to
Artwork ~ participate at your own risk! 💋 Last two slides are ceramic trophies by Beatrice Wood! <3
This is a thank you letter / musical slideshow dedicated to all the lovely people who helped in so many ways to build and fire our new double decker kiln here @ceramicsschool . Thank you all so much. I love you all so much! Putting this together had me in tears!
I’d try to give all the thank yous and tell the much abbreviated version of the story here, but I’m tired of feeling mandated to surface level engagement, and those of you who know me know that brevity has never been my specialty, so I’ve taken a hint from my 21-year-old more internet-satisfied self and gone back to the long form! So, if by chance you desire 12 pages of unedited explanation and many more images that you may observe at your own pace and without my questionable though certainly impassioned keyboard accompaniment, then please visit my website and enjoy 🌀MY NEW BLOG🌀
Also, Fire melts ICE!
❤️🔥,
-Henry JHC
Hey friends! Our 2026 artist residency call for applications is open from now until Sunday February 8th! We have three windows of time we will be offering residencies this year ~ spring, summer and fall ~ and we’re so looking forward to seeing everyone’s work and puzzling together another constellation of art stars to join us once it starts to warm up this spring. Our artist residency is the cherry on top of a big, beautiful, delicious studio cake and we are so grateful to get to hang out, make stuff and learn from new friends! To read more about our artist residency and to apply, visit our website ~ the link is in our bio! : 0)
We had such an awesome time with our resident artist Olivia Gibb @black_kandy back in November! We saw Olivia’s work out in the wild a while back and hoped she’d want to come do a residency with us one day, lucky us! We had an awesome few weeks hanging out making stuff, workin on building the wood kiln, firing up the rocket kiln and having fun!! So fortunate to know this wonderful weirdo. <3 Love ya!
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A little ditty about Olivia: “She likes making art cause it feels like flying!! Vehicles for this journey take shape in clay, music, paintings and performance. The undercurrent of her work exists in tandem with her relationship with punk music and the DIY (Do It Yourself) community. She currently lives in Philadelphia.”
Hello and Happy new year! We are coming into the beginning of 2026 feeling forever grateful and excited for all things behind and ahead in our little studio. We are starting the beginning of this year catching up on emails and all sorts of things that need our attention after the hyper focus of building and firing our new wood kiln ~ more on that soon!
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This winter session we will be running a 6 week deep dive into teapots ~ Teapot Tuesday class starts January 20th ~ visit our website for more info and to apply! Wishing you all joy, support, strength and warmth in this new year. See ya soon! <3
A magical snow and pottery covered mountain is soon to make its yearly visit to our studio and we’d love for you to come celebrate with us! ❄️ Our annual Holiday sale is this Saturday December 20th from noon-7pm! The snowy mountain scape will be full of lovely pottery and sculptures by our studio members and staff.. we will have cookies, warm beverages, friendship, solstice cheer and many other delights!! Please come say hello and find a little ceramicy treasure for yourself and someone you love!! <3 ⛄️
Hey fishys! We are hosting a thee-part free public workshop series alongside the first firing of our new wood fired kiln!
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Free Three-part wood-fire workshop at Ceramics School - No RSVP needed!
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Saturday November 22nd | 2 - 4PM | Public Workshop: Make something! Join us in making something to fire in our wood kiln! We’ll provide the clay, cover basic hand building techniques, talk about making in consideration of the firing ahead, and see where mud takes us!
🌞 Saturday December 6th | 2 - 4PM | Public Workshop: Glaze and Load day! Come glaze what you made on the 22nd! The wood-kiln gets so hot that the ash from the wood forms a glaze on our ceramics, and the flame pulls iron to the surface of our ceramics making a sort of long exposure image over the duration of the firing - so glazing for wood firing is different! We will demonstrate glazing and often *not glazing*, wadding and sea shells, discuss possibilities, get excited about not knowing, and do a kiln loading demonstration! 🪵 Sunday December 14th | All day | Fire the wood kiln! We will be firing the kiln all weekend - Stop through to put some logs into the kiln and learn about the process of firing a wood-fire kiln. You wont want to miss the firing, it’s really cool! There will be an on-going pot-luck! : - )
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Wednesday December 17th | 2-4PM | Work pick-up! Come see all of the amazing things that came out of the kiln and scoop your new wood-fired ceramics!
Hey there! We are super excited to host a Morning wood-fire class this November/December that will culminate in the firing of our new Hamtramakiln! The class will be Sunday mornings 10am - 1pm, Nov. 16 - Dec. 14. We will have coffee going!
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We have been working hard this summer and fall building our new kiln here in the yard and it will soon be ready for its inaugural firing! Join us in taking a deep dive into learning all about wood kiln design, history and firing. We will be making a lot of ceramics, testing glazes, slips, clays and then loading and firing the kiln! The firing is a super fun, communal and involved process- we will work together to transform clay into high fire ceramics and we will have a potluck!!
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Students have unlimited open studio time within our hours of operation and are strongly encouraged to come in outside of class time to make stuff! :0)
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All skill levels welcome, applications due by Monday Nov. 10th! **We will also have some free public workshops around the wood firing, stay tuned for those dates and info soon!**
Hello friends!! We wanted to share some pics of the progress of our “Hamtramakiln” wood-kiln and possibly inspire some participation tomorrow (Sunday 11/2)! Thanks soooo much for everyone who came out and helped out as part of our wood kiln building workshop series! if you’re wishing you could have made it out we’ve got great news for you, because it continues tomorrow as we will be casting the upper arch of the kiln- an event which is sure to be very exciting and a ton of work! We will be hand mixing 1200lbs of castable material and carefully packing it into an arch mold so we need many hands! It is a group project and the process will work best with at least 6 people and will last all day long - 9am to 5pm is our hopeful timeline, but it could go later! If you’re interested in checking it out, helping out, bringing a snack, we’d love to have you at the barn raising / grotto reveal party. Wear somthing you don’t mind getting dirty. We will have a little bon fire and hot drinks going to keep you warm and we’ll make you some food if you stick around! :-) <3 <3 Alsooo we will be sharing info about an upcoming wood firing class and some upcoming free workshops soon!
Hi all! *We are hosting a little slide show chat and work in progress peak with our current resident artist Christopher Williams this Thursday evening October 16th at 7 pm!* We will have some soda waters and some tea, hope to see you there! :-)
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Christopher Williams is with us for a short and very sweet two week residency this fall. We’ve so enjoyed spending time with Christopher in and out of the studio! Their artwork is such a genuine and beautiful expression of their passions and inner world and it has been inspiring and expansive to watch them make in the studio and to talk about art and life! Durring their residency, Christopher has been making transportive, fantastical and erotic horse sculptures and has been burning down various organics such as dandelions into ash to test in glazes! We love Chris and their art!!
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Christopher Williams @christopherl_w is a visual artist and educator currently residing in Chicago, IL. Christopher earned their MFA degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Ceramics. They earned their BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute, and finished a two-year Post-Baccalaureate at the University of Arkansas. Christopher has spent time studying traditional fresco techniques and classical painting in Florence, Italy which is directly referenced in the work they make. They are an impassioned gardener and flower advocate.
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“My studio practice is concerned with the intersection of figure, vessel, and botanical. These elements are combined to create an auto-biographical fantasy world informed by eco-futuristic thinking, to reimagine relationships between human and other-than-human. My work searches for belonging to an artificial environment that deeply engages with pleasure and fantasy. Like a flower, the color and ornamental movement within my work act as a sedative, luring in the viewer. The imagery, however, is often obstructive and hostile”
