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Studio Potter is honored to announce that we are now accepting applications for our Fall 2024 Internship Program!
Internship Opportunity:
- Social Media Management Intern
- Membership Coordinator Intern
- Print Publication Intern
Why Intern with Us?
- Real-World Experience: Work on meaningful projects that have a real impact on our clay community.
- Mentorship: Learn from industry professionals (editors, publishers, information technologists, artists) who are committed to helping you grow.
- Networking: Connect with peers and professionals, building a network that can help you throughout your career.
- Skill Development: Enhance your skills in archival research, publishing, social media management, and more.
- Flexible Schedules: We offer flexible working hours to accommodate your academic commitments.
- Opportunity to Publish: All interns are offered the opportunity to publish their research or narratives.
Interested candidates should submit their resumes and cover letters to director@studiopotter.org.
As Lindsay Flack's internship with Studio Potter comes to an end, I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for all the hard work and dedication that all of our interns have displayed. Our interns' contributions have been invaluable to our team, and their enthusiasm, fresh perspective, and willingness to learn have been truly inspiring. Whether it was their service to archival research, copyediting, social media management, or publishing, the way they improved our readership experience consistently exceeded our expectations.
As our interns move forward in their careers, I have no doubt that they will achieve great things. Please know that you always have a network of supporters here at Studio Potter, and I encourage you to stay in touch as you continue your professional journey.
Please enjoy this narrative from our Spring 2024 Internship Program.
I started my freshman year at Kutztown University with a plan to double major in art and professional writing. I first chose the two because I felt like I needed writing to make a living, something I thought ceramics could not provide.
I quickly realized that I chose writing, not for stability but because it is my way of explaining my thoughts and sharing my perspective with others. As an artist, being able to support my work verbally is just as important as being able to create it visually.
As it gets closer to the end of my college experience, I am tasked with moving forward to create a career path for myself that supports both my passion for clay and my connection to writing.
For the past four months, I’ve had the privilege of interning with Studio Potter.
While working with the journal, I was in my last semester at Kutztown, feeling the pressure of graduating and the unknowns that were ahead of me. I felt the sadness and fear of leaving all that I knew behind, while simultaneously feeling great achievement, optimism, and ambition for the opportunities that are yet to come.
Throughout the last three weeks, I finished my final pieces, said goodbye to the studio and the community we’ve all created within it, and finally graduated after five memorable years.
Monday, April 15th: Workday
The loading dock doors are propped open, bringing in the warm outside air. There is no one around, and it is quiet.
A studio usually teeming with artists – feels desolate – with no more squeaky wheels spinning, or the sounds of chatter in the main room. It is starting to feel like an ending.
As I sit at my wheel, I am uninspired. Without an idea of what to make next but knowing that now is my time to make all the things I never got to make.
My hands want to make cylinders.
They push and pull the clay, but always come back to this basic form.
Without alterations, the cylinder is untouched and simple. It has straight walls and reminds a viewer to see things for what they are and to acknowledge the world around them for the simple and easy things that exist within it. A blank cylinder speaks to the idea that not all things need to be complex to be valued.
I make cylinders over and over again because I find peace within them. I find that I am able to slow things down, see things as less convoluted than they are, and maintain the control I have over the things I create and do.
As an artist, I strive to say more with less, where the power in my pieces comes from their presence alone.
My work in ceramics is not fully developed or complete, and I may never be finished evolving, but I think this is what it means to be an artist.
It is Monday night, and the studio is empty.
Wednesday, April 17th: In the Studio
I am comforted by the wheel I have sat behind for the past few years.
I know the floor it rests on, the wall behind me that I lean against, and the shelf I have collected bisque, tools, glazes, and lots of dust. This studio has been my safe place, the place I choose to go every day, no matter the mood I am in.
The feeling of “home” is personal; the things we see, the sounds, smells, and textures around us all bring us comfort in familiarity.
In just three weeks, I will graduate from Kutztown, and my time with clay will take a pause until I can find a new way to continue making.
Saturday, April 20th: Last Wet Work
Today was especially hard.
I sat in the studio with my friend Anne-Hee, who sits at the wheel next to me. It is the last wet work in our studio, signaling our time at Kutztown coming to an end. Both of us feel the pressure looming over our heads. We know these would be our last pieces until we both move on to new things and take our places in new studios.
Anne-Hee and I are fifth-year seniors, extending our stay to its max, holding on to the studio we’ve grown and learned in for the past four years. The connection we’ve made at our wheels, from conversations about the art we make to conversations about life and the hardship of moving on. We laugh together at our wheels listening to Anne-Hee’s one-of-a-kind playlists. We throw a lot of pots – some we cherished, glazed, and fired, and others that landed right into our reclaim.
Our plan was to stick around in the studio all day long, with fresh blocks of clay and forms left unmade, but when it came time to throw what felt like our last pieces, I couldn’t bring myself to allow today to feel like an ending.
I’ve made countless pieces in this studio, studied and researched, made hundreds of failed glazes, felt the devastation of a broken piece, built the same one back up again, and so much more. This studio is where I found some of my biggest successes and failures.
At this moment, I felt the pull away from comfort, the universe telling me that things cannot last forever, that it was time to bring my memories with me instead of leaving them behind. If I choose to move forward and treat my experiences like they will disappear, they just might.
Today is last wet work.
Tuesday, April 23rd: The Beginning of the End
It is starting to sink in.
Starting to sink in, that it is time to move forward.
Every Tuesday, I talk with Lindsay Oesterritter, my internship supervisor here at Studio Potter.
When I reached out to Studio Potter with the goal of becoming an intern, I was excited by the opportunity to do something that involved both of my interests. My aspirations as a writer and artist seemed to perfectly align with the journal, which values storytelling and narrative in the ceramics community. It felt like the perfect combination of the two things I was good at.
The internship was a short four months, yet the experience brought me to new realizations and goals for my future career.
Working alongside artists who are also writers opened my eyes to the possibility of being both at once and making a career out of two things I am passionate about.
Lindsay, a working artist and writer, shared some of her experiences with me, along with guiding my work as an intern. She gave me advice on where I could go from here, but something I never expected to gain from Lindsay was perspective.
She said something that stuck with me and might stick with me for a while as I enter this next phase of my life. She told me that where I am now is a good place to be and, as I graduate, I will have a “panoramic view” of the next steps and opportunities I can take. Lindsay’s phrase “panoramic view” changed my perspective on graduating and allowed me to look forward to what is next.
From this, I take away the privilege I have in where I am standing. I am metaphorically standing in an open field. I can go left, right, forward, backward, or stay where I am planted. It is entirely up to me to choose where I go. The opportunities may not be endless, but there are many, and I am standing exactly where I need to be.
Thursday, April 25th: The Last Bisque
I finished my last few pots at the very last minute.
It was Thursday night. I attached handles, uncovered inlay, carved my last details, and signed the bottoms of my final greenware pieces. The cart of last-minute bisque was almost empty while students loaded work into the kilns. My pieces sat on the bisque cart, awaiting their final journeys.
I imagined the pressure they were under, sitting in a 2,000-degree kiln, holding tight to their forms, hoping not to crack, crumble, or warp.
In this moment, I am greenware, under the pressure of the unknowns I am facing, fearing for what is ahead, afraid that I too might crack.
Wednesday, May 1st: Reclaim
I have three buckets of reclaim, full to the brim.
I will leave this studio with all three full buckets of reclaim. They will sit in my basement until I find a solution to reclaiming in my mom’s tiny apartment.
If I leave them behind, I am wasting perfectly good clay that can be used to make something new. These buckets hold countless new forms and a continuation of my work as an artist.
Throughout my last year here, those buckets remained in place, and I kept adding and adding to them as if maybe they would disappear if they were avoided for long enough.
Thinking back, I treated graduating like reclaim. I imagined all the answers would come to me. I figured if I stopped thinking about what I was going to do after graduation, my fears of not knowing would leave and I would somehow know exactly what was next.
Life is not a bucket of reclaim.
Friday, May 3rd: The Last Glaze
I enlisted the help of Julia, my friend and roommate, to finally glaze all the pieces I made this semester.
Julia graduated last year and has stuck around Kutztown, holding close to the moments she spent here. We first met in the ceramics studio and connected over clay, but there is also the coincidence that I had nowhere to live the following year and she needed a roommate. We became close friends and roommates and shared a love for clay.
As a new graduate, Julia had no place to make ceramics. I felt her struggle in being away from the studio – how difficult it must be to long for something you love doing. The reality as a graduate is that there will be times when other responsibilities take precedence over the things you love and long to do.
I invited Julia to the studio to help me finish glazing.
The difference between my work and Julia’s is spontaneity. She pushes the limits further than I ever would. At times, I have an inability to escape precision and perfection, but Julia does not fear making mistakes, messing things up a little, or throwing some glazes around. Besides the fact that I had twenty-plus pieces to glaze and not much time to finish them, I asked Julia to help because I knew she wouldn’t be afraid to tell me to push things a little further.
The community that a studio creates is designed to allow you to try new things as an artist and to challenge each other to push boundaries without fear of the results.
The most difficult things to leave behind are the people and the close friends I’ve made in this community.
Thursday, May 9th: Cleaning Day
I’ll admit, my space in the studio is a mess.
I went back today to clean up the clutter I’ve made throughout the last semester and years before. My creative process can be messy. Although it begins and ends with careful planning and sketching, somewhere in the middle I find myself throwing clay around.
As I started throwing things away, putting things in boxes, and wiping clay off every surrounding surface, I found memories in all the little things I collected. I had countless stickers, business cards, and pamphlets from three previous NCECA conferences, a ceramic piece I was gifted from a past classmate filled with additional little clay trinkets, each a memory of a moment or student I knew from the past.
Objects are said to hold memory. This is especially true in ceramics. Each piece we make, formed by our hands, holds the person we are in that moment. I’ve met so many artists in this studio and connected with each one in different ways. These objects I find hold the person they were in that moment and the person I once was too.
If I could go back, I’d give my ceramics away to more people, to capture the people we were, to freeze the time we spent together.
If I could go back, I’d collect more from the people I knew, in hopes that I’d find those pieces on this day and relive everything once over again.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t change the way I worked or the mess that I made.
Saturday, May 11th: Graduation Day
I never thought I’d shed so many tears in one night.
I walked across the stage with my ceramics people in front of and behind me. It was surreal to finally be standing there in my cap and gown, accepting my diploma, with some of the people I love most around me.
I heard the cheers of my family in the crowd as they called my name and Jess yelling “That’s my sister!” in her loudest voice. I knew this moment would eventually come, but I never quite imagined it in my head.
As commencement came to an end and we all walked out surrounded by our families, professors, and friends, I felt that everything was officially over.
I didn’t quite realize the pain of moving on until I hugged a friend that night to say goodbye. On my way home, I drove in silence, with tears streaming down my face. I have left homes, places, and experiences before, but this leap away from comfort is something like no other.
No matter the phase of life that I am in, there will be moments where I have to move on. It may never be easy to let go of an experience, but beyond what I leave behind, there are many new opportunities waiting for me.
Although I may be fearful for what is to come, I am comforted in knowing that everything will eventually work out.