Asking to be Welcomed

BY jennifer zwilling and josie bockelman

Making Place Matter was born out of The Clay Studio’s move from Old City, our home since 1974, into a new, purpose-built facility about a mile away in the South Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. We examined how the location of The Clay Studio had shaped the organization over forty-seven years, how a move would affect the organization, and how we could respectfully enter a new neighbor- hood. We asked questions: How can we ask to be welcomed into a new community? How can we build connections where all can flourish? We centered ceramic art and artists to help us answer these questions and to frame our first exhibition in the new building around a central question: What makes place matter?

We started by examining the definitions of the words themselves: Make, Place, and Matter. Each have layered meanings that create myriad combinations, echoing the many ways The Clay Studio programs manifest our mission: to serve artists and community through access to the ceramic arts.

• Make (making): form (something) by putting parts together or combining substances; construct; create (as in art, building, community, relationships, etc.).
• Place: a building or locality used for a special purpose; a specific area or region of the world: a particular city, country, etc. / Verb: to put in a particular place or position; to present for consideration.
• Matter: the substance of which a physical object is composed (i.e., clay); a subject under consideration / Verb: to be of importance.

Place Matters. Clay is made of the earth we all share, and therefore can be a metaphor for place. Making Matters. Making art with clay has the power to ignite creativity, break down barriers, and create shared experiences. The Clay Studio is a MAKER PLACE where we value the act of creation as a way to share our stories.

We as an organization imagined how an exhibition could illustrate the importance of place, clay, and community, introduce our mission to our new community, and reaffirm our purpose to our current local, national, and international communities. The invited artists, Kukuli Velarde, Molly Hatch, and Ibrahim Said, each bring an important connection to The Clay Studio and address the value of place in their work through the lenses of their own cultural heritage and identity. In her excellent essay in this publication, co-curator Elizabeth Essner explores their works in the exhibition.

Place Matters: Our location shapes our future

When we selected our new location in South Kensington in 2017, we were aware of the rapid gentrification of the neighborhood and recognized that our presence as an institution would be an inevitable part of that cycle. However, rather than passively accepting this, we wanted to be an active, thoughtful, and positive force within it.

As a staff, we asked questions, examining what barriers existed, our own precon- ceptions, and how to overcome them. We worked as a team. Deputy Director Josie Bockelman’s expertise with community engagement, curator Jennifer Zwilling’s deep thinking about artists and exhibitions, and executive director Jennifer Martin’s support and leadership combined to re-conceptualize The Clay Studio’s gallery program to best reflect our mission of service to artists and community.

Soon after we chose to move to South Kensington, Josie stopped by my desk to say she wanted to work together to design programs to engage the neighbors around our new home. It was still years away, but she had the foresight to know we had to start immediately in order to earn the trust of our new neighbors, long before the building would be complete. — Jennifer Zwilling

We realized right away that in our new home we could finally combine what we had been doing successfully with our hands-on community programming with our exhibitions. We could harness the energy and excitement that comes with touching clay to add meaning when visitors experience art in our gallery. — Josie Bockelman

Five years before we opened The Clay Studio’s new building we began creating pro- gramming that would help us form meaningful relationships with our new neighbors. We knew we wanted to enter the neighborhood—and the longstanding cultural community within it—in the most respectful way possible. We needed to ask our new neighbors to welcome us. To that end, we designed two hands-on projects to introduce ourselves directly to the residents of South Kensington: Maker Days and Clay & Conversations.

These preliminary projects utilized two distinct approaches to engaging neighbors. Maker Days presented free, hands-on activities at existing neighborhood festivals to reach hundreds of people for a short time. Clay & Conversations took an alternate approach, cultivating deep relationships with forty people over six months through art-making activities and discussions. Led by artists Roberto Lugo and Jennie Shanker, Clay & Conversations connected these artists with community members because they also had lived and worked there. Through their shared experience, together they could talk about the past, present, and future of South Kensington.

These projects brought into sharp focus the reality that strong connections are made by spending time together, sharing meals, and listening to conversations. We had learned that it was essential to devote significant time and resources to relationships in order to truly deserve the trust we were building together. This became a core tenet of our plans for the inaugural exhibition in the new building. We invited participants from those programs to become a part of a new Exhibition Council to help us plan the exhibition that would inaugurate our new building and become Making Place Matter.

Making Matters: We talked and made art together

Developing an Exhibition Council allowed us to combine our dedication to serving the community with a new approach to curating by directly engaging our new neighbors and current community into the exhibition design process.

The Council has been meeting since fall 2020, and will continue meeting during the exhibition and beyond. The fifteen-person group brought together South Ken-sington residents, staff members from six South Kensington cultural organizations, in-house artists at The Clay Studio, and the Making Place Matter staff team. Gener- ous funding and guidance from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage allowed us to compensate the Council members for their time and to provide meals and childcare during meetings, which we believe removed barriers for participation. María Albornoz, Community Organizer, established a strong relationship of trust between The Clay Studio and Council members through consistent, active communication.

For the meetings we designed a series of discussions about “place” with related art-making activities around language, translation, exhibition design, and how de- sign can help people feel physically comfortable in the space. We talked together about what it means to have agency in a place and how to make that happen; how to make the space welcoming; how the Council might act as ambassadors between The Clay Studio and the greater community. Exhibition artists Velarde, Hatch, and Said met the Council and gave presentations about their work. At meetings, the Council—artists, educators, and residents of the surrounding neighborhood—shared their experiences, expertise, input, and opinions. We developed friendships and learned from each other.

Working with the Council, we began to decenter our curatorial method in favor of strengthening relationships between ourselves and our various constituencies. We are grateful that these community members were willing to help us think through ideas around Making Place Matter, and work to make the exhibition engaging and welcoming to every person who walks into the gallery. Over two meetings, our partner Tiny WPA led the Council in a design process to create seating furniture for the gallery. Our goal was to cultivate a comfortable, equitable, and respectful space for anyone entering the exhibition. Ana Gabriela Jiménez and María Albornoz’s informative essay in this volume details our activities and outcomes.

Collaboration is at the center of our new community-centered exhibition design process. Another aspect of our new curatorial process is the inclusion of a co-cu- rator to widen the perspective of the exhibition program beyond our regular staff. We felt incredibly lucky to have Elizabeth Essner on the Making Place Matter staff team from the early planning stages in 2019. Essner’s elegant writing and generous spirit of collaborative scholarship have made the exhibition rich and clear. Together we thought deeply about the concept of place and clay within the contemporary art conversation.

Alongside ongoing Council meetings, Zwilling and Essner had the privilege of periodic studio visits with Velarde, Hatch, and Said to discuss the themes of place and cultural identity as they each developed their bodies of work for the exhibition. Curators rarely have the chance to work closely with artists over several years; these conversations created more touch points in the web of collaboration. As our relationship with the three artists evolved, we were able to share new insights with the Council.

Making Place: Making art is now part of every visitor’s experience at The Clay Studio

Another benefit of the community-centered process is giving visitors direct access to the artists during the exhibition and the opportunity to make their own art in response to what they see in the gallery. Velarde, Hatch, and Said have each designed a community art project and will lead visitors in a hands-on project during on-site residencies. The resulting community projects will remain on view permanently in the building. These avenues for the artists to be in direct contact with exhibition visitors will work to center the visitors, and provide an active experience that will enhance viewing art at The Clay Studio. Through combining art-making activities with our exhibition program, we are promoting internal collaboration between our education and curatorial departments to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of our organization. By giving visitors the opportunity to meet the artists and respond to the exhibition through their own artwork, we are inviting external collaboration.

Making Place Matter has allowed us to put all that we learned into practice, launching a new community-inclusive curatorial framework, and manifesting a new focus on radical hospitality—the practice of putting extraordinary emphasis on making people feel welcome. As a result, we are welcoming them as a part of our community as we respectfully ask to be welcomed into theirs.

This exhibition marks the beginning of a new era of community-centered exhibition design at The Clay Studio and beyond. The process of designing Making Place Matter with both a co-curator and the Council has fundamentally changed our practice as an institution. We are dedicated to continuing to integrate voices of our community into every aspect of The Clay Studio, our programming, our future planning, and our mission. We will continue to strive to live up to the idea that clay is a force for good. As the building and this exhibition open, we feel privileged to have worked with the exhibition staff team, the Council, and the artists and to celebrate together. But this is just the first step—we have learned together, and now we will continue to make this place matter to our community next door, across Philadelphia, and around the world.