Featuring Southeast Kansas
By Ann Leach
As we embrace the final six months of 2024, where do you plan to be at year’s end?
Pittsburg, Kansas, Potter Sylvia Grotheer can tell you her plan: to not fail at running a new business, continue sharing her love for clay with her community and continue to grow a space where people can find ways to express themselves with clay. And she’s well on her way to goal achievement.
“Things have been going well so far,” Grotheer said. “Time sure does fly when you’re running a business by yourself, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. The response and reception have been great so far.”
Grotheer discovered a love of ceramics in high school. She had noticed a potter’s wheel at the back of the classroom, but there were no lessons on how to use it. Still, it called her name. “It was something I wanted to try,” she said. “I was always drawn to the functionality of pottery.”
Grotheer pursued her study of ceramics at Pittsburg State University, and she met many pottery friends at her first public studio experience at the now-closed Phoenix Fired Art in Joplin. “They helped me learn and progress and gave support to me over the last 10 years,” she said. “These friends helped broaden my views of what could be done with clay and how to hone my skills in the direction I wanted them to go.”
The community and open studio environment in Joplin inspired Grotheer to create something similar in her hometown of Pittsburg. She said, “Making pottery is amazing and fun, but I really thrive when teaching people to achieve their own visions, just as my mentors did with me. If I can pass on the enthusiasm for clay and acceptance for expression they provided, I’ll have succeeded in my vision.”
This vision sprung from Grotheer’s belief that “fostering spaces where we can gather together and be ourselves with no pressure to actually ‘be’ anything else are important.” And she began to build her business and a space where “everyone feels welcome, valued and might be surprised at how much creativity they have when they have a space to express that part of themselves.” Grotheer’s studio is set up as a collective and shared one. Glass artist Raven Copeland shares the back part of the space, while Grotheer works in the front. “It’s set up as open as it can be. There is lots of natural light, wheels for working, plants, and clay projects in various stages of creation are scattered throughout.”
Visitors to the studio can take single session and drop-in classes, sign up for more learning in a four-week class, attend workshops and attend open studio times for students who have already taken classes.
And when Grotheer isn’t teaching, she’s creating her own porcelain pieces. “I hand paint every piece with a unique scene. What that scene is depends on my mood and vision of that moment. I’m very much an organic process person and combining fine illustration with functionality really speaks to me.”
“Making pottery is amazing and fun, but I really thrive when teaching people to achieve their own visions, just as my mentors did with me.”
— Sylvia Grotheer