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Our pottery experiences are one-time, two-hour sessions guided by local Santa Fe artists and geared toward travelers, newbies, and anyone looking for a fun introduction to pottery. Students will enjoy a local beverage while learning to use the potter’s wheel and may also get to try out hand-building. Pottery experiences prioritize touching, forming, and manipulating clay into expressions of art and are experience-based, meaning that at the end of each session students recycle their work back into the clay mound. Students do not, however, walk away empty handed as they receive a $15 credit in the gallery, which is full of ceramics locally-handcrafted by Santa Fe artists.
We start each pottery experience by doling out drinks (we’ve got a variety of beverages to choose from, and you’re welcome to BYOB as well). Then we take students on a tour of our studio where over a dozen Santa Fe ceramic artists come to create. Paseo Pottery has been part of the local art scene for three decades, and our space includes both a working ceramics studio and a retail gallery. In the studio, artists feverishly design and create—think muddy mayhem, whirling wheels, fiery kilns, and sundry clay-coated potting paraphernalia—while in the gallery finished pieces are displayed and available for purchase.
There’s a long tradition of ceramic arts in New Mexico, and the process of making pottery is often viewed as a spiritual practice. Pottery is among the most ancient forms of art and is perhaps the most fleeting. Chards of ancient ceramics are scattered on bluffs and foothills throughout New Mexico and are a constant reminder of the transitory nature of our particular form of art and of our very human existence. For millennia, ceramic artists across New Mexico have transformed clay into vessels to be held between hands, to be filled with nourishment, to be brought to lips, and after serving their purpose, to be returned to the earth.
At Paseo Pottery we embrace this rich history, and we present our classes for travelers in the form of pottery “experiences.” During each experience, students have two hours to create their own works of art using the tools at their disposal in our studio, all the inner creativity they can muster, and a raw lump of clay. Our teachers start with a demonstration to give students basic pottery-making techniques, then act as guides while students unleash their inner artists and tap into the creativity they may find bubbling to the surface given the artistic energy that abounds in Santa Fe. Each student creates their own unique and beautiful expression of art. At the end of the experience, students present their masterpieces to the rest of the class, take photos if they wish, and then—in the spirit of embracing the ephemeral nature of art and of humanity—students ceremoniously recycle their masterpieces, deconstructing them, kneading them back into the lump of clay from which they came.
Similar to monks on the other side of the earth who spend days, even months, creating sand mandalas, only to then blow them away in an instant, ceramic experiences at Paseo Pottery encourage students to learn our craft, to create, to appreciate, and then to let go. One might think of our experience-based classes as “mud therapy.”
Experiences are led by our professional ceramic artists who volunteer their time. Cost includes a two-hour experiential class complete with libations, clay, materials, and tools.
Thanks to HBO Max, JauntTV, Santa Fe New Mexican, Radio Free Santa Fe, The Santa Fe Reporter, The Richard Eeds Show, and New Mexico Magazine for their recent coverage of Paseo Pottery, our pottery experiences, and our charitable mission!
Enjoy a locally hand-crafted beer or cocktail by Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery during your pottery experience, or you’re welcome to BYOB as well.
