The Warwick Pottery Newsletter - August 2025

We're busy bees as we prepare for our upcoming slip workshop with Deborah Goletz. We'd like to thank everyone for their interest in the workshop- we are pleased to announce that all spots are now FILLED. We'll see you there!

NOTICE TO ALL STUDENTS:

We are experiencing an ongoing problem with clay footsteps in the main room of the Community Center. This is unacceptable and must be corrected immediately. Effective immediately, the following rules are to be observed without exception: 1. Entering the Building: All individuals must enter the building with clean shoes, proceed directly through the main room to the stairs or elevator leading to the pottery studio 2. Exiting the Building: When leaving, you must use the stairways leading directly out to the parking lot. After exiting, follow along the outside of the building. Thank you for your cooperation in maintaining the Community Center for all!

Student Corner: A Piece by Morgan M

There's an old potter's adage that says, "Clay has memory." Press your thumb into a pliable mound of earth, and it will hold the indentation long after the surface is smoothed over. Beneath the glaze, beneath the finished shape, the clay stil remembers where it was pressed, where it was pulled, where it was wounded. Isn't that how we are, too? Our souls bear the imprints of moments long past. Words spoken in anger, love offered and withdrawn, joys that made us sing, betrayals that hollowed us out, all of it is pressed into us. We may smooth our faces and build sturdy lives, but underneath, there are grooves and impressions time has not erased. Perhaps it feels like weakness to be so formed by what we've experienced. But what if it's also what makes us most beautiful? What if the memory held within us is not simply scar tissue but a testimony that we have lived, that we have been molded by both pain and grace? Scripture echoes this in Psalm 56:8 ESV: "You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?" Nothing we've carried has been lost on God. Each sorrow is known, each joy remembered. When we come to God with our memories, we aren't offering Him pristine, unmarked clay. We bring Him all the fingerprints, all the fractures, all the lines that tell our story. And in His hands, they are not flaws to be erased, but lines of narrative He weaves into something more whole than we could imagine. Today, dare to notice the places you stil carry the past. Rather than despising them, let them remind you of your tenderness, your capacity to be shaped, your wilingness to keep living. Clay that refuses to be moved becomes like stone. Your softness is not your failure: it is your glory that can be used for God's glory. Reflection: Take three slow breaths.