Saint John's Communal Ceramic Studio

Ceramicist Danika Vautour is working on opening Sea To Sky, a communal ceramic studio in Saint John where artists can make and display their ceramics work.

“The community can come in and learn all about ceramics and take workshops,” says Vautour, a graduate from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.

Her idea for the studio began when she started her own ceramics business, Danika Vautour Art & Décor, drawing upon her experience when she worked in a gallery in Cambridge, UK from 2018 to 2020 and was using a communal studio to make her art.

“I realized that there is actually a lack of facilities in the area, so I thought it would be a really great opportunity to start something like that and bridge the gap,” said Vautour.

She says Saint John has an abundance of places to create art, but there are limitations in the space one can find. Vautour hopes Sea to Sky can provide a bigger space for artists to focus solely on creating ceramic art.

“We use a lot of different tools in the making process, and we also use a lot of different pieces of equipment – so you have things like a pottery wheel, a kiln, some people might have a lot of shelving for their pieces, but the equipment certainly adds up in the cost,” she said.

For example, a single pottery wheel costs $3,000 on top of paying shipping costs.

“That’s why it’s such a crucial thing to have facilities available for emerging artists who are just starting out, who might not be able to afford to buy all of this equipment right off the start,” she adds.

Sea To Sky is in the early stages of procuring a location and Vautour hopes to have a smaller scale studio up and running by the end of the year.

This story was originally published on Huddle.Today.