From the studio

Dan Pearce's Pottery Corner

Dan Pearce writing at a clay covered table in The Clay Hole pottery studio in Draper, Utah, with a sketchbook of pot shapes and a freshly thrown bowl beside him

I love almost every part of The Clay Hole. Owning it, running it, the members, my staff. There are also a lot of really tricky dynamics I never expected when I opened this studio. So I write about them. Writing is how I have always figured my world out.

I was a writer long before I was a potter, and I've always believed in the power of hitting publish on whatever the truth of life is. It is how I think. It is also how any of us learn anything from each other.

Open letters, member dynamics, the hardest parts of all of it. These are my unfiltered thoughts. None of it is a how-to. The teaching lives in The Clay Hole University.

26 posts and counting.

  • Illustration of a curly-haired woman in a green apron holding a gray pot on a pottery wheel and looking up with a hopeful, worried face, with a kiln in the background.

    Dan Pearce

    It Takes Weeks to Find Out

    Remember the paper chain you tore a loop off every night in December? Pottery makes you wait weeks for the thing you made. That wait is the good part.

  • Illustration of Dan Pearce in a gray beanie and a clay-smudged apron, standing calm and smiling in a busy pottery studio while members laugh, throw and hand-build behind him.

    Dan Pearce

    I Will Never Trash Your Studio. Not Even Now.

    A few days ago I wrote about the rumors. Today, the other half: why I'll never trash another studio or its owner, even the ones talking about me right now.

  • Illustration of Dan Pearce in a gray beanie and a clay-covered apron, sitting at a pottery wheel beside a freshly thrown pot and staring at his phone in disbelief, in a sunny pottery studio.

    Dan Pearce

    What the Heck Is Up With Other Utah Pottery Studios?

    Apparently I hire nothing but teenagers, my staff is untrained, and I'm dating every member. Here are the real numbers, and the rumors I won't dignify.

  • Illustration of Dan Pearce sitting calm at a pottery wheel in a spotlight, surrounded by stressed copies of himself vaping, gambling at poker and roulette, partying, binge eating pizza, lifting weights, drinking at a bar and overworking at a laptop.

    Dan Pearce

    Every Addiction I Ever Had Lost to Art

    A year and a half of vaping put me in the hospital. Years before that, roulette ate my poker money. Both lost to art. Here is what yours is costing you, with the math.

  • Illustration of a bearded man in a gray beanie and two women throwing pots on wheels in a small, crowded studio packed with tool bins, shelves and stacks of plates.

    Dan Pearce

    My First Little Studio

    The first Clay Hole had a garage door, one table and a crowd that stayed until two in the morning and never touched clay. I still miss it.

  • Illustration of a woman in a clay-smeared apron throwing a pot on a wheel inside a rainbow-tinted bubble, while dark storm clouds with rain and lightning swirl outside and two calm potters work behind her

    Dan Pearce

    The Last Thing You Should Give Up

    The first thing most of us give up in a hard stretch is the one thing holding us together. I think we have the order backwards.

  • Side by side at The Clay Hole pottery studio in Draper, Utah: a photograph of Dan Pearce pulling a tall narrow form on the wheel, and an AI generated animated render of the same moment beside it

    Dan Pearce

    The Truth About The Clay Hole and AI

    Why I use AI in my art business, written out properly. The five reasons, the water argument, the family members who have left the dinner table over it, and what I actually ask of...

  • Illustration of nine people crowded around a worktable in a pottery studio, every one of them reacting differently to the same pots, one holding up a cracked pitcher while the others look delighted, worried or unimpressed

    Dan Pearce

    Your Brain Is Lying to You in Here. Mine Is Too.

    Nobody is looking at your wobbly rim. About half of us are certain they are. Here is what my brain gets wrong in my own studio, and the five things I do about it...

  • Illustration of Dan Pearce standing in the middle of a busy Clay Hole pottery studio in Draper, Utah, holding a mug and watching a table of members laughing together and a couple working at a wheel

    Dan Pearce

    On the Outside Looking In

    I built a studio so I would have a place to make art and find my people. Turns out the person who runs the room is the one who cannot be in it. Here...

  • A potter working alone at a wheel in the Clay Hole studio in Draper, Utah

    Dan Pearce

    You are allowed to be the weird one.

    An invitation to turn up as who you actually are, on the grounds that the version of you that gets edited for the room can only ever attract people who liked the edit.

  • Illustration of an angry member leaning across a worktable and pointing a finger at Dan Pearce, who stands with his arms folded in the middle of The Clay Hole pottery studio while other members keep working at the wheels behind them

    Dan Pearce

    Two Sides to Every Pancake, and This One Is Mine

    Twelve things that have been said and done in here while I tried to keep this place good. The knife one. The fifty thousand dollar one. The one where I was also in the...

  • Illustration of a new member with a tote bag imagining the group at the next tables already knows each other

    Dan Pearce

    The story you are telling yourself about this room.

    For the members who quietly disappear because nobody talked to them, friendships did not form fast enough, or an instructor spent longer with somebody else. Why that reading is almost always wrong, and what...

Never miss one

New posts land in the newsletter first.

Studio news, new posts, glaze notes, and the occasional strong opinion about running a pottery studio.

Get the newsletter