Working Together to Make Art Making More Sustainable
What are we supposed to actually DO about the climate crisis? As artists? As humans?
Trying to figure out how to engage in change at the scale needed to slow down the runaway train that is global warming feels pretty overwhelming for me, and I’m guessing for many.
Photo of a burned tree amidst understory regrowth located in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in California, a location that has been ravaged by wildfires twice in recent years, with 98% of the park impacted.
An artist could radically change everything about their own work - the making, the material sourcing, the concepts, the waste disposal - and still not have any measurable impact on the behaviors causing our climate crisis. But, as with so many things related to justice work, we stand a chance at having an impact if we work together.
The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) holds an annual conference, among other educational offerings, focused on engaging and sustaining “a community for ceramic art, teaching and learning.” In two weeks time, thousands of ceramic makers will converge on Richmond, Virginia for this year’s conference, titled Coalescence, taking place March 20-23, 2024.
At the conference, the NCECA Green Task Force - a group that narrows in on supporting the clay community through educational resources and discussion around environmental sustainability for ceramics and clay practices - will be set up in the “Projects Space” to further the conversation around what things we can do as artists to address climate concerns. In this free and open-to-the-public area of the conference, people will have the ability to learn about three cheap and easy DIY methods for improving the sustainability of working with clay.
Alternative firings will lessen our carbon footprint. Artist Lisa Orr will be sharing the developing technology around rocket kilns, “a smokeless, stealthy wood-fired kiln using repurposed materials” that needs only a small amount of fuel to burn in a “specially designed chamber, causing a very fast, clean firing,” by building one and sharing the plans so that anyone else can, too.
The “proper” disposal of the clay and glaze waste produced in all ceramic studios involves shipping it to incinerators, typically located in lower income, majority BIPOC neighborhoods, where the fumes and other pollutants are suspected to increase risks of cancers, birth defects, and other adverse health impacts. Another solution is to find ways to combine clay and glaze “slop,” the muck at the bottom of cleaning buckets and sink traps, into usable material through a process of drying, measuring, and rehydrating.
Photo of studio waste, left to right: dried clay sink slop, dried glaze slop, rehydrated 2:1 mix ratio of clay and glaze slop - a now usable material.
Clay and glaze slop stinks. But so does the inequity of who is most impacted by the climate crisis.
The third DIY set-up will be a make-it-yourself recirculating sink. Recirculating sinks offer ceramic artists the ability to wash up after making without ruining plumbing and while severely limiting the use of fresh potable water.
Further reading:
Osa Atoe, “Portrait of a Kiln: Lisa Orr's Wood Fired Rocket Kiln,” February 8th, 2024
Thrive Clay Studio’s recirculating sink plan.
Emma Logan is an artist, educator, and member of the NCECA Green Task Force, and can regularly be found nerding out about California agriculture practices, chamber pots, the Bell Beaker people, and the intersectional environmental impacts of redlining.