Letter to our Community from Lilly Zuckerman - New Studio Manager

Please join us in giving a warm welcome to Lilly Zuckernam, our new Studio Manager.

September 5, 2020

The Clay Art Center and I are on an uncannily similar journey together. I am emerging into the role of Studio Manager just as The Clay Art Center is reemerging into classes beginning after the Coronavirus closure. Students will be returning to the studio - albeit behind masks and plexiglass dividers- to begin anew.

Quarantine has given me slow time to reflect on our cultural definition of “essential.” I believe that art making is essential, feeling a sense of belonging to a community is essential, caring for your community is essential, and touch is essential. I believe that a haven of making, creativity, and community like The Clay Art Center is essential. As we rejoin each other at the Clay Art Center studios, let us bring a new appreciation for our communities, this space, and the time we have to make art.

The essential task of clay is to record touch and time. I’m wondering what students, resident artists, associate artists, and our community fellow will decide to record in clay after this massive cultural upheaval of continuing living through a global pandemic. Clay will always continue to be a stunning competent medium for communicating connection and defining what mattered to us then, now and in the future.

As I learn The Clay Art Center’s history and walk through its spaces, taking note of how it has been shaped over the years - a repair here, a coat of paint there, so many layers of decisions - I’ve been thinking about caretaking: every step and every decision of the previous custodians, including Katherine Choy and Henry Okamoto, who started us on this journey in 1957, brings us to this moment today. I hope to deliver The Clay Art Center into the future with the same thoughtful care. This is the responsibility we each take to one other: to stay healthy and safe as a community, and to make sure this great place endures for future artists to connect.

Lilly Zuckerman

Studio Manager

Lilly’s Bio

Lilly Zuckerman joined the Clay Art Center in 2020 as The Studio Manager. She is originally from Pittsburgh and grew up in rural PA on a farm with horses, geese, chickens, dogs, cats, and magical woods. Lilly has been working in clay since high school and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Pennsylvania State University in 2010. She completed her Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from the University of Colorado in 2017. Lilly's studio work has been made possible by residencies at The Archie Bray Foundation, The Anderson Ranch Arts Center, The Clay Studio of Missoula, and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia. She has exhibited nationally at Trax Gallery in California, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, The Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, The Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, The Clay Arts Center in New York, and in the travelling ArtStream Nomadic Gallery. Her work has been published in Ceramics Art & Perception, Ceramics Monthly, Pottery Making Illustrated, and most recently, Mastering Hand Building, by Sunshine Cobb. Lilly  is an artist and art educator currently living in Connecticut with her wife, cat, and dog.