Ceramics club fires up fundraising with pottery sale

Sade Tavarez
Mon, 09 Nov 2015 20:24:29 +0000
Arts & Life, Events, hopkins hall, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, SLIC, The Student League of Independent Ceramists

Some of the ceramics that will be sold at the SLIC annual pottery sale. Credit: Sade Tavarez | Lantern Reporter

The Student League of Independent Ceramists (SLIC) is throwing clay to make some dough for their club. Their annual pottery sale runs through Tuesday this week, but the club has long been at work.

“We meet every week and it’s meant to support the graduate students and undergraduate majors in ceramics. We talk about opportunities that are happening around. We go to conferences,” said Britny Wainwright, president of SLIC and a MFA candidate in ceramics.. “Sometimes we have shows and exhibitions together as a club. We do a little bit of everything.”

The pottery sale that SLIC holds is done every semester — one in the fall and then one in the spring — where SLIC members are able to sell their work, consisting mostly of mugs, to anyone interested in buying ceramics.

“There’s undergrad majors, undergrads who are interested in becoming majors and graduate students making work. We kind of have a day where we come together and make a lot of work in the classroom. Then we get to sell the work and the money we raise goes into bringing artists and other opportunities,” Wainwright said.

Another member of the club is Elaine Buss, MFA candidate in ceramics. She is the treasurer for SLIC and she able to talk a little bit about where the pottery sale proceeds go towards.

“It is enough money to really support a lot of programming like bringing in the artists and really helps with NCECA which is a large national conference,” she said.

SLIC was able to attend the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference last year. NCECA is one of the biggest conferences for ceramic artists which gives the chance for artists to talk and network with each other.

“It’s a really big deal, it’s a really good professional development event. It’s kind of a way for ???connecting everybody in our field, so for students to be able to go is a big deal and the SLIC sales help make that happen” Buss said.

Besides getting the chance to go to conferences, the money is also used to bring in artists to talk to the club.

“We also bring in visiting artists for students to see that you can continue to be an artist outside of school and have a real life which is really useful especially for the undergraduates,” Buss said.

One of the visiting artists that SLIC brought in to talk with was ceramic artist, Michelle Summers.

“She got to do studio visits, we got to talk to her about our work and she did an artist talk which was open for anyone to come to,” Wainwright said.

The ceramics sale runs from 10 a.m to 5 p.m. on the Oval side of Hopkins Hall.