PLACE FOR POTTERY
Silt Studio fills artistic gap
Silt Studio is at once a selfish and selfless endeavour by Regina artist Jay Kimball.
When the ceramic artist moved back to the city in 2015, he needed a pottery studio to work from, and there wasn’t one — at least not one he could use in perpetuity.
But, he wasn’t alone in that conundrum.
When the University of Regina College Building renovations began, the only public pottery studio in the city closed.
“I started asking around if there was anywhere to go to. And then I found out that everybody I asked was also in the same boat,” said Kimball.
Ceramic artist Mark Budd agreed. “I was noticing that there was a huge gap,” said Budd, who continued to take classes at the U of R’s main campus simply for the use of the studio there.
“Most people in Regina that I know have either built a studio in their garage, or in a room in their house or in the basement or something,” which is a really expensive project, Budd noted. “That (public) studio space was definitely needed.”
Kimball and his partner, multimedia artist Terri Fidelak, opened Silt Studio in March on the edge of downtown Regina.
A sunlit open space, with accents of pastel and plant life, it’s an inviting studio for anybody to work on pottery — from novice students who have never used a pottery wheel before, to professionals who want to rent one of the private studio spaces.
Silt offers classes on a flexible drop-in basis (pre-registration required) for people of varying skills.
It hosts monthly date nights for people who want a fun evening out.
“It’s having the experience that’s the important part,” Fidelak said.
“It’s not necessarily about what you make. … The experience of making is art.”
With a membership, people can use the studio at their leisure, 24/7, “so people can be creative when they want to be,” Kimball said.
With a mud-free membership,
Silt is also open to clay nonficionados who may want a nice space to work on other projects.
CREATING COMMUNITY
“We think of this (studio) as a work of art, a space that we’re curating and creating that’s warm and inviting and inspires creativity,” Fidelak said. “And then community can be built from here, like people can come here to be creative and connect with themselves or connect with other people around them.”
“It’s a bit of a reignition of a pottery community in Regina, because there’s an old tradition,” said Kimball. “It’s not really necessarily even about like our community that we’re building, but it’s theirs.”
With Silt, Kimball points out, “kitchen potters” are finding a new place to work — those artists creating at home since the community pottery programs closed.
The Pasqua Neighbourhood Recreation Centre shut down in 2010, and the Neil Balkwill Centre’s pottery program ended thereafter to make way for a jewelry studio.
Kimball has been “opening and closing studios since I was in my 20s, kind of filling a need either for the community or for myself.” More recently, he had a studio in a shipping container in Mervin, a village about 90 kilometres east of Lloydminster.
He started working with clay in childhood, quite by accident.
Growing up in Rockglen, 160 kilometres south of Moose Jaw, “I really literally grew up (with clay) under my feet and I didn’t really think about it too much. I had some early childhood experiences of digging the clay out of the hills with my uncles and making stuff just like on the beach.”
POTTERY’S APPEAL
Budd, who teaches at Silt as well as renting studio space, believes pottery’s appeal is in its tactility.
“We live in such a technologically, techno-centric world, right? We’re in our heads a lot of time sitting at computers,” said Budd.
Working with clay lets you “get your hands in mud and get out of your head and do something. It’s a physical thing. It’s a tactile thing. It’s a sensory thing.”
And, it’s something that “anchors in on memory,” said Kimball, because it’s art that can be usable.
“Even something that’s really not precious, like grandma’s teapot that might have been like a $5 Eaton’s special, carries so much memory and emotion because of the use of it.
“If an object is handmade, it’s already imbued with memory and meaning, because the person usually buys it from an artist.”