A ribbon cutting Saturday marked the unveiling of the KC Clay Guild’s new Ceramic Arts Center at 500 E. 39th Street. Executive Director Louis Reilly said the event marked an important step forward for the organization.
“Now we're in the top five largest ceramic art centers in the country, and that includes universities,” Reilly said. “So it really is world class as far as scale, but also the facility and what we have here as far as equipment.”
Reilly is a ceramic artist who arrived in Kansas City as an artist-in-in residence at the Guild. He became the executive director in 2020, after serving as its part-time studio coordinator starting in 2015. Reilly said the move to Midtown reflects the growing demand for ceramics programming in Kansas City.
The Guild’s new 18,600-square-foot facility is nearly four times the size of its former location, allowing the nonprofit to accommodate more students, artists and private studio renters.
During the grand opening on Saturday, the celebrations included artist demonstrations, community workshops and tours of the new space.
“The biggest new thing is that we've gone from having a couple artists studios for rent to having 26,” Reilly said. “And those all rented within a couple of weeks of us making that announcement. So we're looking forward to seeing people move into all those spaces.”
For the past 40 years, the Guild has offered people a chance to try their hand at handbuilding or take a spin on the potter’s wheel in a fully-equipped studio space. Lisa Sharpes is a hobbyist who likes to make whimsical fairy houses out of clay.
“This new facility is bigger and it has more space,” Sharpes said. “We’ve got more handbuilding tables and they are great for people who like to stand when they work.”
Sharpes said that it’s convenient for her to keep tools on a shelf that she rents from the Guild. At the old location, there were fewer shelves available for members to rent.
Retired art teacher Bob Putnam has been a member of the Guild for 38 years. He said he’ll be teaching classes at the center starting in October.
“Getting my hands dirty is great,” he said. “It's so tactile, so malleable. And it's been a defining force in my life for over 50 years now.”
The Guild also offers opportunities for professional ceramic artists. It’s offered a residency program since 2008, and artists receive a $9,000 per year stipend, private studio space, free firing and glazing, and the opportunity to teach and earn income. Residents work 12 hours a week and teach classes as part of their regular duties.
Addressing a need for more space to make art
Reilly said it became apparent by 2019 that the Clay Guild had outgrown its space. Membership was climbing and workspace was limited. There were six-month waitlists for classes. The demand for shelf and studio rental space exceeded supply.
“We started seeing a really significant uptick in interest in our programming after COVID,” Reilly said. “I think there was just a big push to kind of get out and get away from your phone and use your hands and use your mind in a different way.”
For years, the Guild had operated as a self-sustaining nonprofit, generating revenue from classes and studio rentals. Occasional grants helped the organization purchase equipment. Plans for the new building required a new strategy. So Reilly and the nonprofit’s board launched a capital campaign for the new building in 2023.
“Until we launched this capital campaign, our largest grant ever was $20,000, so that’s a big change,” Reilly said. “And now we've raised almost 3 million.”
The Guild got its start in 1988 in the living room of Kansas City potter Michael Smith, an artist best known for his colorful handmade dinner sets. He said he reached out to 15 other potters in town to see if they’d be interested in meeting up to share ideas.
“I actually wrote letters and invited them to come over to the house and have a couple of beers and talk about pots that first night,” Smith said. “We had 30 people in my living room, and there was quite a bit of energy around the idea of making it a regular meeting.”
By the early 1990s, the Guild had established a studio space on 39th Street, just a few doors down from its current location. Since 1999, the nonprofit has been based in a 4,500-square-foot building in Waldo on 74th Street.
Smith says the organization has now come full circle.
“I think it's a phenomenal organization, largely due to the fact that it's mostly all volunteer,” Smith said. “With the new space, it's an incredible art center. So, yeah, I'm just amazed at how far it's come.”
