When the 11th annual Michiana Pottery Tour opens on Saturday, September 24, 2022, pottery enthusiasts from around the region will return to ask themselves the same question as they drive between the nine stops offered this year:
‘How did all of this come to be here?’
In this original short film, the clay community responds to this question, discussing how Goshen has grown to become destination for their shared medium.
Clay artists and 2022 pottery tour hosts Trevor Daugherty, Dick Lehman, Sadie Misiuk, and Justin Rothshank, along with Goshen College professor Merrill Krabill sat down last year to share about why they make Goshen home and, at the same time, shedding light on why so many others are drawn to do the same.
“I knew that, if I was working alongside all of these other great potters, my career would take off because of this little nest of ceramic artist,” Misiuk said.
In conversations about the connections that a spirit of mentorship has forged across generations of Goshen potters and the countless ways the impact of former Goshen College professor Marvin Bartel’s teaching continues to be felt in the community’s culture of collaboration and experimentation, Goshen’s Clay Community provides insight into a culture that attracts clay makers from around the country to make a space for themselves here.
“There’s kind of this family tree of artists in Goshen where you’ll find Marvin kind of at the base, and Dick Lehman, and, off of that, certainly Justin Rothshank in recent years has done a great job of organizing and bringing local potters together,” Daugherty said.
And Goshen’s Clay Community takes you on a behind-the-scenes tour of the spaces – and handmade kilns – where Goshen artists gather to fire work independently and together.
“To do a wood firing is a community event. It’s a collaborative event,” Lehman said. “It just really can’t be done entirely alone, [and] that’s a piece that continues through the way we work today.”
Watch Goshen’s Clay Community for an inside look at the people creating a meeting place for clay artists and a marketplace for the work they create here.