Clayworks

Creativity wasn't just the province of the artists at the Baltimore Clayworks annual get-together. The 200 guests were also encouraged to be artistic at "A Hands-On Affair." In one corner of the Sheraton Inner Harbor banquet room, partygoers could decorate clay coin dishes with a variety of glazes. In another, folks were using brightly colored polymer to mold pendants and rings for themselves. For those who just preferred to watch someone else's creative juices flow, several students from Clayworks' community arts program fashioned all sorts of wondrous clay sculptures.

Paul Derstine, retired executive director of a New Windsor-based nonprofit global health company and former interim head of Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland, has been named interim director of Baltimore Clayworks. Derstine succeeds Benjamin Schulman, who resigned under pressure in June amid questions about his leadership and financial problems at the longtime ceramics studio on Smith Avenue. Derstine will serve as interim manager while the Clayworks board conducts a national search for a permanent executive director.

Doug Baldwin has made a career of ducks. His ceramic sculptures all have ducks in them, and the subjects of his art include everything from art college to art history. If it's not too much of a contradiction in terms, Baldwin's creations are subtly hilarious. You giggle internally, if not necessarily out loud.Right now, he's having a show called "Duck Art History Revised" at Baltimore Clayworks. Every piece is a reproduction of a famous work of art history -- Munch's "The Scream," van Gogh's "Bedroom in Arles," Picasso's "Girl Before a Mirror" -- with a duck, or ducks, in each one. You should go. You owe yourself a giggle.

Baltimore Clayworks kicked off its 30 t h anniversary year by inviting back an old friend. "Fire & Spice Block Party and Seconds Sale" was the new and improved version of Clayworks former "Spice It Up" summer party. "The last year [for Fire & Spice] was 2006. So, we brought it back. It's casual. It's fun. It's based on the arts. We have an entire studio filled with seconds and it all goes on sale tonight," said Deborah Bedwell , Clayworks founder/executive director.

CELEBRATING ART WAS IN the air at Baltimore Clayworks' Silver Anniversary Gala at the American Visionary Art Museum. Art was also on the walls and the silent auction tables and on some of the people themselves. Dr. Julia McMillan looked particularly fetching in her lime and turquoise beaded gypsy skirt. Susie and John Smith clustered with Sabina and Joe Sherman in another colorful clique. Artist extraordinaire Joyce J. Scott greeted the 425 guests at the door. Later at dinner, she and partner Larraine Whittlesey would entertain the gathering.

In Mount Washington, it's a case of an arts center vs. the law -- and the result is costing a chunk of the center's budget.When Marilynn J. Phillips, 54, a retired professor living in Hampstead, asked about taking a course at Baltimore Clayworks in North Baltimore last month, she was told the basement classrooms in the 1919 building are not accessible to people using wheelchairs. The narrow bathroom in the basement also did not comply with federal access laws."I was interested in the option of taking any one of their courses," said Phillips, who has used a wheelchair for 11 years because she contracted polio as a child.

A new exhibit of ceramic table settings and servers made by 34 artists will be on display at Baltimore Clayworks in Mount Washington beginning tonight. The whimsical collection, intended to celebrate the theater of the table, features everything from a decorative piece called "Forbidden Fruit," to "Viagra Server." Among the more abstract and curious works is the earthenware "Encrustation 2000," a centerpiece arrangement of three green, rounded shapes, each adorned with a quill. "The flamboyance fits in with the whole millennium hoopla," says Leigh Taylor Mickelson, program director at the ceramics center at 5706 Smith Ave. "It's an exuberant vision of the future."

When visitors enter Baltimore Clayworks' new gallery, located in a Mount Washington mansion that once housed the Sisters of Mercy, they are "amazed at the transformation," says sculptor Leigh Taylor Mickelson, the ceramic center's director of programs and communications. Track lighting, white paint and gleaming wood floors have turned the Victorian structure into a bright warren of spaces, each revealing a treasure of ceramic art. But the "transformation" concept doesn't stop there. In its gala 20th year, Baltimore Clayworks is also celebrating the transformation of clay into objects, of ceramics from a purely functional realm into an artistic one, and perhaps most important of all, the emotional transformation of those who have learned to fashion a lump of clay into something personal and powerful.

The historic Mount Washington building that formerly housed the Sisters of Mercy will be donated to the Baltimore Clayworks by St. Paul Cos. Inc. as the company marks the first anniversary of its merger with USF&G Corp.The company said it does not need the Provincial House building, which has an estimated value of about $700,000 and has been vacant for about 1 1/2 years.Trying to sell it to a commercial organization could have raised zoning issues and caused more trouble than it was worth, Executive Vice President John A. MacColl, who heads the company's Baltimore operations, said yesterday.

Islands, hearts and pineapple-shaped vases: All these came out of 12 young hands caked with clay over two weeks of morning classes at Baltimore Clayworks, a pottery center in Mount Washington.They were the creations of inner-city children who have little exposure to the arts. They had never seen or touched clay before taking the classes.Opening up the world of ceramics to such children is the point of a new program run by Clayworks and the Woodbourne Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping children at risk.

Sonia Gordon, a Baltimore artist, educator and anti-war activist, died Saturday of respiratory failure at Roland Park Place. The former Mount Washington resident was 87. Sonia Wachovsky was born in Baltimore and raised in East Baltimore by her mother, Rose Jaffe Cohen, and stepfather, Philip Cohen. The family later moved to Northwest Baltimore, where she graduated from Western High School in 1937. She earned a bachelor's degree in English from Goucher College in 1941. That year, she married David P. Gordon and settled into life as a homemaker raising her family.

COMEDY PRYOR ENGAGEMENT RAIN PRYOR, DAUGHTER of the late comedian Richard Pryor, will perform her hybrid jazz cabaret and comedy show, Pryor Experience, at the Hippodrome Theatre tomorrow at 8 p.m. The concert will feature music from legendary jazz group the Blackbyrds, led by original member Keith Killgo and his jazz quartet. Pryor's father battled multiple sclerosis in his later years, and her performance will benefit the Maryland Center for Multiple Sclerosis. ....................

The head is 6 feet tall, made of steel bars and weighs between 200 and 300 pounds. It was supposed to be covered with a clay and soil mixture this weekend during a fundraiser and then displayed in front of Baltimore Clayworks for the summer. But thieves derailed that plan this past weekend when they carted away the $4,000 artwork, leaving nothing but a dried ring of grass in front of the Mount Washington studio. "I was absolutely speechless and felt sick," said Ann Hazels, the gallery owner and events coordinator for the studio.

Baltimore Clayworks, a community center dedicated to the ceramic arts, was founded with the goal of creating a place where artists, students and teachers could come together around clay. Now expanded to two buildings in Mount Washington, the nonprofit still offers classes and workshops but also offers more, including residencies, exhibitions and community programs.

A new exhibit at Baltimore Clayworks brings together pottery and sculpture from three regional groups. North Meets South has works by 17 artists from the Clay Studio in Pennsylvania and Penland School of Crafts and EnergyXchange, both in North Carolina. North Meets South runs through July 25 at Baltimore Clayworks, 5707 Smith Ave. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays. For more information, call 410-578-1919 or go to baltimoreclayworks.org.

Exhibit Finneran's sculptures Go see sculptor Bean Finneran's works on display in Cycle, her East Coast solo exhibition, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. Finneran devotes thousands of single coils to one sculpture, which becomes a tribute to nature and time. The exhibit is at Baltimore Clayworks, 5707 Smith Ave. Free. Information: 410- 578-1919 or baltimoreclayworks.org. FYI Kevin Cowherd is on assignment. His column will return Thursday.

For more than two decades, the students and resident artists of Baltimore Clayworks have worked inside recycled buildings - a former library branch that dates from 1919 and a former convent that dates from 1883. Now the nonprofit arts organization is preparing to expand its Mount Washington campus by building a three-story annex designed expressly for artists working with clay. Clayworks directors say they plan to begin construction by May 2002 and complete the expansion by early 2003, assuming they're successful with a $3.5 million fund-raising campaign.

If you're curious about pottery and ceramic sculpture, Baltimore Clayworks invites you to try the craft this Saturday in the sixth annual Clayfest, held on the grounds of Baltimore Clayworks in Mount Washington.Potters will offer free instruction on hand-building, using a potter's wheel and on decorating prepared clay forms. They will also show beginners how to fire pots or sculptures in the Raku style.The festival will be from 1 to 4 p.m. outside the Clayworks building, 5706 Smith Ave. Home-baked goods and lemonade will be available.

'100 TEAPOTS' The functional and decorative teapots in the new 100 Teapots III exhibit at Baltimore Clayworks are an unusual mix. The exhibit, running Saturday through Feb. 25, was juried by potter Julia Galloway and features 100 teapots by 69 artists from around the country. An opening reception is 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. ....................... The exhibit runs Saturday through Feb. 25 at Baltimore Clayworks, 5707 Smith Ave. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays. Call 410-578-1919.