Clayworx: Fostering Art Education in the Community

The updated exterior of Clayworx: Ceramic Arts Learning Centre in Old East Village.

By Adi Berardini

Clayworx: Ceramic Arts Learning Centre, formerly known as the London Clay Art Centre, is setting a new precedent for clay education in Old East Village, London ON. The charitable arts organization was founded in 1981 to provide a shared studio for members of The London Potters Guild, to host more classes, and foster an appreciation for clay in London and the Southwestern Ontario region. Currently, Clayworx has around 40 active volunteers and runs approximately 70 classes a year, every day of the week, for 300 days of the year.

Volunteers from The London Potters Guild started a capital fundraising campaign in 2003 and purchased 664 Dundas St. in March 2008. Thus began the enormous task of iteratively raising additional capital funds and renovating the Victorian-era building in Old East Village over five years. Clayworx has always had devoted members and volunteers to help build a sense of artistic community thriving in the two-level space, with a retail shop and artist studios on the ground level and a workshop space on the second floor. Clayworx has also been at the forefront of conceiving, financially supporting, and facilitating the large-scale, community-engaged mosaics in Old East Village, led by ceramic artists Beth Turnbull Morrish and Susan Day, making it a landmark neighbourhood for public art in London.

Clayworx Executive Director Bep Schippers and Board of Director John White at the new brand unveiling on March 31st, 2023.

In March 2023, the London Clay Art Centre and The London Potters Guild consolidated the two brands under the name Clayworx: Ceramic Arts Learning Centre. The initiative began under Clayworx’s former executive director, Darlene Pratt. She says, “We felt strongly that we needed to adopt an entirely new name that embodies the wonderful people and the inspiring place that brings them together. We wanted a name that is easy to understand, feels welcoming to everyone, and reflects our standing as the premier location for ceramic arts education in London and the region.” As Clayworx’s current executive director, Bep Schippers, explains, “Our new goal and vision is to provide everyone access to exceptional educational, artistic, and community building experiences with clay.” Schippers explains that the new brand is both playful and approachable featuring bright colours and the fundamental shapes used in all art forms, including ceramics.

Clayworx offers classes and workshops to support beginners working with clay and training and professional development specifically for emerging artists and artists of all levels. As Schippers further explains, “There are some people that just want to come here and make a couple of things and then go home and that’s fantastic. Then we also have artists who want to build their skills and maybe eventually open their own studios and become exhibitors elsewhere in Ontario or [across] Canada.”

Our new goal and vision is to provide everyone access to exceptional educational, artistic, and community building experiences with clay.

The organization aims to provide an accessible space for anyone interested in learning to work with clay and practicing the ceramic art form. Schippers details how Clayworx has been supported by instructors who have devoted countless hours to teaching ceramics to their students. Clayworx also engages BealArt students and alumni who have explored ceramics in their education nearby at H.B. Beal Secondary School.

The Indwell Mosaics project located at Embassy Commons (740 Dundas St).

Clayworx has also established itself as a leader in public art creation in London, placing Old East Village on the map with their many large-scale mosaics. The most recent mosaic project was installed on the new Indwell Embassy Commons building, by lead artist Beth Turnbull Morrish and assistant artists Taryn Imrie and Cassandra Robinson. This massive project includes three large-scale panels that surround the exterior of the building.

Lead Artist Beth Turnbill Morrish hard at work on the Indwell Mosaics panel.

The mosaic panels comprise over 10,000 handmade tiles, created in workshops by artists and members of the community. As Turnbull Morrish details, “Early on in the design process, I had the opportunity to meet with some of the residents and staff of Indwell, as well as tour one of their other buildings. I asked them to express what is the true essence of Indwell, and the intention for its residents. Hope, belonging, and safety came up again and again, as well as the cycles in life that we all go through.”

The process of creating the large-scale mosaic panels was both a collaborative and labour-intensive one. The design and tile creation took 8 months and installation took 8 weeks. As Beth explains, “panel one depicts the dawn, a symbol of new beginnings, the centre panel shows a mid-day sun, a flowing river and blooming flowers, representing a thriving, love-filled life, and finally, in panel 3 we see birds in the sunset.” She also explains the symbolism behind the elements such as the “native Ontario flowers depicted, the shape of the Thames or Antler River, and the birds that represent peace and freedom, as well as being part of a flock and the ability to fly alone.”

Detail of one of the Indwell mosaics panels.

For Clayworx’s next public art project, look down— mosaics will be inlaid in the sidewalks along the commercial corridor of the Old East Village. The sidewalk tiles were created by different community groups and organizations in the neighbourhood. Inspired by a tree with decorated leaves or “dyad” shapes, reminiscent of the London, Ontario logo, the project will bring a sense of storytelling and colour to Old East Village.

Local pottery and ceramics at the Clayworx retail shop.

Clayworx has expanded its reach in London and beyond by offering accessible clay education while sticking close to its roots. The thread that brings it all together is the passion for arts education and community building. If you’re interested in taking ceramic classes or workshops, check out their upcoming classes and available programming. Make sure to also visit their on-site ceramics shop to view the creations of local artists who use Clayworx as their studio.

To learn more, visit Clayworx‘s website and social media. This article is published in partnership with the Old East Village BIA.

What Do We Discard? Specimen by Susan Low-Beer

Specimen by Susan Low-Beer. Riverbrink Art Museum. Image Courtesy of the artist.

September 10, 2022 – January 21, 2023

RiverBrink Art Museum

By Lera Kotsyuba

Susan Low-Beer’s ceramic sculptures are uncanny forms that play with the tension between anxiety and care. Travelling across Canada, the exhibition Specimen transforms in each iteration. At the RiverBrink Art Museum in Ontario from September 2022 to January 2023, Specimen, curated by Sheila McMath, shows Low-Beer’s ceramics meld into a quasi-domestic space. Their forms recall organs that drape over industrial forms that are a cold substitution for domestic objects of home, a bed, or a table. The discomfort apparent in rest denotes unease, and the forms, between frail organs and technological refuse, link to our anxieties about aging.

The title, Specimen, recalls a cabinet of curiosities of observation, not the clinical study of medical precision but as objects of fascination, inviting closer observation to make meaning. The exhibition embraces humour and the absurd through the familiar made strange. The uncanny nature of organic forms meeting industrial elements is displayed through the tubes and ovoid shapes to the draped ceramic forms to their rigid grid surface patterns and metal assemblage elements. The works invite closer inspection by pointedly asking the viewer to lean into their discomfort, embrace the absurd and disquieting forms, and contemplate age and decay in the Anthropocene in an era of mass waste.

Specimen by Susan Low-Beer. Riverbrink Art Museum. Image Courtesy of the artist.

Walking through the RiverBrink Museum of Art, the space itself seems caught between two worlds, that of a domestic space and a museum. Walking on polished floors in the Georgian-style building, you’re momentarily transported to a liminal space, a space outside of time. Coming upon the gallery space, the rectangular room is adorned with simple wood panelling and an assortment of small tables from different eras arranged throughout the room, the assemblage of draped and balanced ceramic objects adds to the uncanny feeling evoked by the space, both familiar and alien at the same time. The sculptures are ovoid and organ-like, with fibulae and tubes protruding from grid-patterned forms that are not quite organic, recalling metallics and plastics. The ceramic forms are glazed matte or with a high sheen, and the feeling of unease shifts to anxiety where you’re unsure if you’re standing in a medical refuse facility or an industrial scavenging ground. They may be interpreted as curiosities, their half-familiar forms inviting closer inspection. Without the framework of encased forms behind glass, the ceramics are still arranged for display, inviting the viewer’s gaze.

Glossa (2018) is a long ovoid ceramic shape with two tubes extended, searching for something, the form cradled on a stained pillow as if in a hospice. The object rests on a dresser, yet the uncanny organic form’s placement denotes care and the eerie notes of medical decay, a triage of care for an object past its prime. Although a closer look does not resolve the tension, the broken and deflated forms in the exhibition denote a fragility, a slow decay, whether technological or organic is a matter of perspective.


Susan Low-Beer. Ocellus. Image Courtesy of the artist.

Susan Low-Beer’s ceramics have shifted from figurative to abstract, the forms of Specimen are therefore able to convey anxieties that suffuse our age: from aging to climate disaster and mass waste, but not without a humorous touch. Ocellus (2018) is a ceramic ovoid with two protrusions, once the interior of something either organic or industrial. The dark glaze and purposeful patching elicit the understanding that an object’s lifetime of use has shaped the wear apparent on its surface. Balanced on a half-moon wood plinth with a do-it-yourself aesthetic of rough assembly, the sculpture sits on top of a polished dark wood table, in contrast with the cement blocks it rests on. The stacking of disparate objects adds humour to the display, easing the tension of clear meaning, encouraging the viewer to embrace the absurd. Low-Beer’s sympathetic gestures, of patching and the readymade plinths, are acts of care for the aged techno-organic form. Rather than a nihilistic bent, Low-Beer encourages humour as the connective thread of the world evoked by her work. There are no clear answers or solutions, but rather than seeking a resolute finality of meaning, she invites us to share a collective experience of uncertainty, and maybe even embrace it.

In Mammilla (2018), two ovoid ceramic forms are linked from within, recalling a symbiotic relationship. An act of care, their connection tube is draped over the other form as if in an embrace, while grey matter pools below. The grid-patterned surface and matte grey and blue glaze with overlaid clay seams gesture to the discard of industry, the plea for care of one form to another, and gestures to an organic tableau. The worn and aged surface once again recalls the age of the forms, their original use disguised by their removal from their original context, yet the ceramics show the maker’s hand in their patched forms, clay smoothed over long-mended wounds.

Susan Low-Beer. Mammilla. Image Courtesy of the artist.

Comb-Plate (2018), made of a ceramic ovoid with two protrusions placed on a woodblock, abstractly looks like an automaton that has fallen on the stairs. The absurdist humour contrasts with the disquiet of discard, whether organic or industrial remains unresolved. Wood and metal chairs, concrete slabs, and hollow wood trunks unsettle the observer, creating the tension between the plinth and artwork, to question where the work ends, and the display object begins. The exhibition offers no respite from the disquieting familiarity of objects, at once domestic and commercial, organic and industrial, clay and metal, art and curiosity, humour and absurdity are the common links.

Low-Beer’s ceramics are transformed in every iteration of the exhibition, domestic furniture unique to this iteration of the exhibition, the ovoid forms shifting the understanding of the gallery space they occupy. The tension between discard and decay and the apparent care of mending instills unease in the visitor. Rather than a finite meaning, can we learn to embrace uncertainty and humour as a form of connection? The exhibition prompts us to consider our relationship to objects and ourselves, to consider the ways and circumstances in which we extend care, and what we discard.