Warning: if, like me, you have a small obsession with kitchen objects—plates, bowls, mugs— you might not be able to attend Brooklyn Clay Tour without saying “I need that.”
From September 8-10, more than 225 artists will display their gorgeous works during exhibits, demonstrations, artist talks and art sales in over 10 neighborhoods from Greenpoint to Park Slope.
“We wanted to give folks the opportunity to take their work and to do something creative to engage the local community,” said Nicholas Newcomb one of the co-founders.
You can pick and choose which exhibits to visit—a detailed list is available on the Brooklyn Clay Tour website—and RSVP to events centered around themes including local history, innovations and of course food.
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“There’s been this relationship between clay and food since the beginning of time that we want to celebrate,” said event co-founder Deme Chappo.
Brooklyn Clay Tour will show-off that relationship with a mug sale at Greenpoint’s Manhattan Ave. Champion Coffee with Clay Space 1205, a Potters in Protest ice cream social at Van Leeuwen (location TBD) and even a Peruvian style pig roast with Gowanus’s Sunfish Bistro chef Miguel Aguilar and clay artist Alyce Barr.
Barr, who grew up in the Catskills uses elements of the places she’s been in her work—the colors of shale and lichens, textures of stone walls—giving her ceramics a look as if it came right out of the ground.
During Brooklyn Clay Tour she’ll be exhibiting white porcelain platters and bowls from under one-inch to more than 22-inches in diameter, as well as wood-fired sculpture and crocks.
She married into a big family that loves to cook while enjoying each other’s company and tries to convey the feeling generosity she finds in gatherings around food in her larger works.
“I came to love cooking with friends and family, or gathering people around a table of food I made for them,” Barr said. “Now I make the dinner and the dishes!”
