Author Profile
Keith Luebke (he/him/his)
Keith Luebke is a retired teacher with two degrees in art, one in sociology, and one in urban studies. In 2020, he and his partner bought an old farmhouse (1896) one block from the house they lived in for over thirty years. Now, in a studio with windows, he makes modest pots and writes on the side. He worked in a variety of nonprofit organizations for nearly twenty years. That work included promoting craftspeople in rural Illinois and New Mexico, but most of his work was with people experiencing homelessness. Keith and his teacher/partner, Judith Luebke, were part-time grant writers from the 1980s into this new millennium. With Judith as editor, Keith wrote funding proposals to create housing and opportunities for low-income families and individuals. They also taught students how to create, implement, and evaluate programs responding to community needs.

Articles

"Carbon Credit Chai," illustration by Elenor Wilson, styling by Zoe Pappenheimer, 2016.
Editor's note: Find Part I of this essay in Vol. 43 No. 2, Summer/Fall 2015.
Mugs on a shelf in the author's home.
Glazed or not, every object made from clay has a surface. But what does that surface tell us?
If Bernard’s Leach’s A Potter’s Book was the old testament for many aspiring studio potters internationally, Daniel Rhodes’ Clay and Glazes for the Potter was the new testament for those living in North America.
During the last decade there have been more and more concerted efforts to decolonize our notions of what working with clay means, and while it is a difficult point in our history to feel optimism, people who make things out of clay are always in community...For those seeking positive changes in our society, we must remember that there are steps backward and forward, the path is erratic and often uncertain, but the arc has been toward justice – we just don’t have enough of it yet.
I was sitting on an open porch in Managua, Nicaragua, when I met the Guatemalans. Members of the Guatemalan Church in Exile, they were anxious to provide information about their troubled homeland to the outside world.