JANUARY 2020 NEWSLETTER

Welcome to our three new general members Portia Bell, Patricia Edwards, Denise Senules and one new student member Victoria Suarez.

It has been a fantastic year for ClayHouston packed full of events: a 3-day hands-on workshop with Alberto Bustos, the fifth symposium featuring Lorna Meaden and Thaddeus Erdahl and our first-ever series of Clay Creative events featuring our member artists and their studios. There were also workshops, our second annual Pop-up Marketplace, our second Regional Show, our annual Members Only Show and to top off the year our third Bayou City Clay Crawl.

ClayHouston also participated in Craft Community Days at the Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts and First Saturday in the Heights. The ClayHouston Facebook group page is thriving with 344 members. Our Instagram page was launched in November, and we have 166 followers. We have had a steady growth in membership from 137 in December 2018 to 174 in December 2019, including seven sustaining members at the $100 level.

Our major fundraiser, “The Bayou City Clay Crawl”, has grown from sixteen member artists and five studios with sales of $3,750 to forty-four member artists and 12 studios with sales of $13,500 with figures in from only about 70% of the artists. Thank all of you for your support.

Our member Naoko Teruya has made it possible for us to offer one Master Class workshop and three separate artist talks and demonstrations in January with Japanese Master Yasuhisa Kohyama. Register here for the Artist Talks. Sorry, the workshop is sold out, though you can join the waitlist.

Join us to celebrate 2020 at the Boheme Wine bar January 16th from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Register Here.

As many of you know, Nell Gottlieb and I took on the leadership of ClayHouston jointly when there was a gap in leadership at the top. Three years later my term has come to an end. It has been a very exciting and happy three years for me thanks to all of you. Nell and I are very proud of our successes focusing on sustainability. We put term limits in place and have a goal of expense neutrality. The 2019 focus was “Membership Strong” with a goal of a 10% increase. We wish to thank the 2019 Board and committees for all the work they have done to make this such a successful year and surpassing our goal to achieve a 22% increase in membership!

Please welcome the 2020 Board, Jessica Phillips, Abbie Preston, Maura Ferro Baroni, Maria Hernandez, Melissa Symmonds, Maria Raquel Morales, Betsy Evans, Stacy Kuropata, Marie-Hélène Nguyen, Mara Cavalcanti Reid, Jessica Kreutter, Anna Mayer and Anne Steacy. We wish you every success.

Anne Steacy

President
ClayHouston.org

P.S. If you’d like to be more involved, please contact me at info@clayhouston.org.