Press Release: New Ceramics Studio at Cotuit Center for the Arts Offers First Classes

New Ceramics Studio at Cotuit Center for the Arts Offers First Classes, Including Open Seats

What: Cape Cod’s Newest Community Ceramics Studio Offers Its First Classes

When: Classes on offer now for January 2020 start

Classes are now on sale in the lead-up to the opening of the John and Marjorie McGraw Family Ceramics Studio at Cotuit Center for the Arts. As of January 2020, students will be able to take classes in wheel throwing, hand-building, sculpting, tile-making and surface decoration among many other offerings. The classes will be provided by the Center’s eight-member ceramic teaching faculty in the newly built studio (known as “The McGraw”), which is due to open by the end of the year. As part of the Center’s ‘Open Seat’ Program, each class will include a free scholarship seat for those who are financially challenged.

The McGraw studio began life 78 years ago as a gas station on Route 28. In 2017, when the property came up for sale, Cotuit Center for the Arts was able to purchase the site thanks to the generosity of its donors and supporters, creating a contiguous seven-and-a-half-acre campus. After reaching out to its members and other constituents through a series of public meetings, the center decided to convert the gas station into a community ceramics studio where people can learn and practice the clay arts.

“We’ve recruited a great group of experienced teachers and we want our users to be able to clear their minds and get their hands dirty in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere,” said Neil Grant, Director of Clay Arts, who runs the ceramics program at Cotuit Center for the Arts. “If you’ve never touched clay before, if it’s been a few years, or if you’re an experienced practitioner, we have something for you at the new studio. We’ll have ten pottery wheels, a slab roller, a room full of sculpture stands, a great clay extruder, a glaze spray booth and some impressively large kilns.”

“This has been an amazing transformation of an old building into a real asset for the community,” said David Kuehn, Executive Director. “We’ve kept the building’s road-facing façade as a gas station in a nod to its historic past, but inside we’ve transformed it into a beautifully lit, well-equipped ceramics studio. Local and guest instructors will be offering classes and workshops in all sorts of clay related arts, and there will be plenty of time and space for users to embark on their own artistic journeys outside of classroom time. In the same way that we select the art for our exhibitions in our gallery space, we are looking to foster a community of clay artists who create boundary-challenging and thought-provoking art.”

Classes at the McGraw Studio will begin in January and the list of offerings is available on the Cotuit Center for the Arts website at www.artsonthecape.org.

The McGraw Studio will have its Open House for the general public in December 2019.

Cotuit Center for the Arts is at 4404 Route 28 in Cotuit. For more information, visit www.artsonthecape.org or call 508-428-0669.

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