A community space rooted in clay

Several thousand years ago, the Laurentide ice sheet covered Rochester and the Finger Lakes, depositing a thick layer of glacial clay. Today, Laurentide Clay seeks to honor that history and create a working space for Rochester artists. 

The community clay space was founded by three friends, Terry O’Brien, Kyle Lascelle, and Jacob Dambra. They realized that creating a community art space that is both accessible and affordable is important to bring in emerging and novice artists. 

On Sept. 4, Laurentide Clay marked a major milestone with its grand opening event on First Friday Rochester, the citywide monthly celebration of local art galleries.

“I think a lot of people are looking for outlets for creativity, community—especially community founded around creativity,” says O’Brien, administrative coordinator at Laurentide Clay.

The owners noticed a renewed interest in ceramics during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. That interest in ceramics followed a broader trend of resisting digitization and embracing an analog lifestyle. 

“There is something about being isolated and online that can feel a bit unnatural, at least to me,” says O’Brien. He describes it as a question of balancing an increasingly digital lifestyle with a craft that requires total focus. “I think it’s just establishing a balance in people’s lives.”

The Laurentide Clay founders saw that people were looking for more spaces to do creative work after spending so much time cooped up at home. As people spend more time in creative spaces, people naturally start developing communities. 

“So many people I know through ceramics have built most of their social network,” says Dambra, community coordinator at the studio.  

Lascelle, the studio’s educational director, noticed that creativity gets stronger around other artists. “People’s work becomes richer when working with others around you,” he says.

He explains that while someone is in the studio, they have immediate access to more information by asking other artists in the space. People start absorbing other artists’ energy and output. 

The studio, at 4 Elton St., across University Avenue from the George Eastman Museum, offers classes ranging from wheel-throwing to hand-building, plus studio rentals and a gallery that showcases work by local artists. It also offers Saturday night classes for kids interested in ceramics. 

“There is really great indigenous history with the Haudenosaunee ceramic practices, and then the local community studios,” Dambra says. “Ceramic history is human history in a way, and having this opportunity to connect forwards and backwards historically and with each other in a space like this, I think it’s a really beautiful thing.”

Dambra mentions other studios in the area—Wheel & Slab, Flower City Arts Center, Turk Hill, and Studio Sales—as well as a historical recreation of early American pottery at the Genesee Country Village Museum. 

“I don’t think people realize how lucky Rochester is with the ceramics community it has,” says Dambra. 

Lascelle and Dambra both studied ceramics at Rochester Institute of Technology, while O’Brien learned it at the Flower City Arts Center. Dambra noticed that much of the information about ceramics was only accessible at the collegiate level. 

“A lot of our goals are deinstitutionalizing that information, making it accessible at a much more reasonable cost,” explains Dambra.

One way Laurentide Clay is making the information accessible is by offering a payment plan, setting it apart from many other studios in the area. An eight-week course, which costs $410, can be split into three monthly payments of $100, $155, and $155.

“That really lowers the bar for a lot of people who can’t drop $400 at one time,” says O’Brien.

Ceramics is a labor-intensive process that requires the artist’s focus. This process allows the artist to disconnect from screens and immerse themselves in the craft.

“You have clay all over your hands, and so it’s difficult to be on your phone,” explains Lascelle, adding that clay pieces can be built by hand or on the wheel. “There are infinite possibilities in the material.”

Laurentide Clay offers wheel-throwing classes in three levels. In Wheel 1, students learn to center clay on the wheel, build a cylinder, and create their first object.

Laurentide Clay is a low-fire studio. 

“Low-fire gives you a couple of things, which are primarily brighter colors and slightly faster firings,” explains Dambra

Thrown clay is fired twice: first a bisque fire, which turns the raw clay into porous ceramic, allowing glaze to be applied, then fired again to vitrify the ceramic and make it food-safe. 

For those who are worried about trying ceramics for the first time, Dambra has a small piece of advice: “Ceramics meets you where you’re at,” adding that there’s magic in the first couple of pots. 

Lascelle agrees with Dambra, explaining that ceramics has a way of humbling the artist and teaches an important lesson, “the ability of letting go in a really rich way.” 

O’Brien hopes to expand the space and bring in more local artists for residency. However, the main goal currently is a bit different.

“Right now, we’re just trying to get the city to give us trash cans. That’s what we’re focused on,” laughs Dambra.

Danik Soudakoff is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s third cohort.

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