Owner of ceramic studio finds reprieve in creating

Sarah Richard, owner of MADE, a ceramic studio in Dayton’s St. Anne’s Hill neighborhood, first moved from Pittsburgh to attend the University of Dayton for Mechanical Engineering. She soon found it wasn’t in her heart to pursue the field. “An engineering degree really taught me how to work in complex systems. I was choosing to look at it from a social side rather than a ‘parts’ side. I got involved in the nonprofit and food access space.”

She graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and a Sustainability & Community Resilience minor in 2019, but that wasn’t the only impactful experience she gained in college. She crammed in credits so that she could take pottery as her very last class. She was hooked and joined a community studio, Decoy Art Center, in Beavercreek. When Decoy closed, the owner and Richard moved business to Front Street Art Gallery, eventually leading Richard to take over MADE and open her current space, a shuttered storefront that once served the neighborhood as a laundromat.

“I really enjoy functional artwork. My interests in sustainability and returning to craftsmanship and skill — instead of mass production and consumerism — really attracted me to it. My physics and engineering brain like working with the technical part.” Richard, 26, lives a short walk from her shop.

Credit: Hannah Kasper Levinson

WAKE-UP CALL

“I get a wake-up call from my boyfriend who is in grad school at OSU. I’m not normally an early riser, but over the past year I have needed to be. I beeline to the coffee maker. I drink a lot of coffee, and I would say it’s not out of the need for caffeine; I truly enjoy the ritual and the drinking out of a ceramic mug (laughs). I use a mug I made so long ago, and it’s not even a nice one. I’m sure if you ask 10 people, they can pick one or two mugs they reach for every morning. The way the rim is, how your lip goes against it, how you handle it. I like small mugs so I get to refill it with hot coffee like 10 times.”

WRITE IT OUT

“In the morning, I’m organizing my calendar for the day and then the week. No week is the same, whether it be because of my day job but also my workshop needs. I’m trying to contextualize which teacher I need to check in with and that’s best done in the morning. I look at my paper calendar and write all that out. I also try to get any administrative stuff done for the shop. Silly things, like payroll and taxes.”

KILN CAM

“Sometimes I run over (to MADE) to load up the kiln.” The space is welcoming with earthy tones and signage by a local muralist, Atalie Gagnet. Richard’s own line, Gem City Ceramics, is the merchandise on the shelves. In the back is workshop space. “I fire (the kiln) in the morning for safety reasons so they’re going through their hottest temperatures whenever I’m awake. It reaches temperature between eight and 12 hours and then you’ve got another 12-24 hours to cool. They’re very safe machines. I have a Ring camera set up so I can monitor it and the temperature. I feel like a mother with a baby cam (laughs).

“I think we don’t get our hands dirty enough — whether it be connecting with our food better by gardening or being able to make something you can drink out of by using your hands. I am a pottery studio first. My most popular workshop is Wheel 101, which is a six-week course. It really allows you to fully understand the process.”

TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES

Richard’s day job is at the Hanley Sustainability Institute at UD, as the Student Engagement Coordinator. She runs the leadership program, supervising about 20 students. “It’s their job to do sustainability work on campus. We run a composting program, an education program. Our areas of concentration are education around sustainability, waste, food, energy and circular economy. I work with students who really want to change the world. Sustainability can be a tough and negative field, but it also is a very hopeful field. It’s how you transform communities. It’s not just about the environment, it’s the people.”

Credit: Contributed

TAKING INITIATIVE

“I try to get to UD at 8:30. Students don’t wake up until around 10 (laughs), so I do some office stuff. My program is the Sustainability Student Leader Program. It’s different every single day, but I am a very student-facing position, which I absolutely love. I know I’m not that much older than them, but year by year they come in with more intelligent, inspiring ways of looking at the world. I meet with two to three students or initiative groups a day.”

LEADING FUTURE LEADERS

“I’ve restructured the program to offer different levels of leadership. I have student directors that I work closely with to lead their peers. I also work with other staff and faculty. This past year, I was on the team to co-author campus-wide sustainability goals. That looked like working with stakeholders across campus: dining services, procurement, waste stream. My role is supporting students in how that can be accomplished. My students run a food recovery network. They go to catering services, recover unwanted food that didn’t get eaten — whole pans that would have been wasted — pick it up and take it to St. Vincent de Paul or another organization. For dining services, we want zero pre-consumer waste by like 2027.”

COMPUTER BRAIN

“Sometimes I will take my hour lunch break and run an errand. I call it computer brain. I can not be on a computer for more than two hours straight.”

OFFICE TREAT

“I lobbied my office to source our coffee locally from Reza’s. I have a pour over, that I made, in my office. So it’s always an office treat when Sarah offers to make someone a pour over as opposed to the coffeepot. I do that a few times throughout the day (laughs). I’m working on a ceramic Chemex shape.”

PIEROGI GIRL

Dinner is family-style with friends. “I leave around 4:30/5. I try to go home and eat dinner with friends. I struggle cooking for myself, (so) my roommate and I will feed one another.” Her best friend also lives close by. “We cook for one another. It’s not necessarily an organized thing, it’s just — come on over! We have food! I am the pierogi girl. I grew up eating them.”

REPRIEVE

If not teaching an evening class at UD, Richard comes back to the clay studio at night. “I think I seem a little crazy to have two full-time jobs, but it really is a relaxing outlet for me after a day of talking and high stimulation. Being able to either teach a workshop or (use) my private studio upstairs. I will go up there and just make and lose myself in that. It’s a reprieve instead of a task.”

BEAUTY SLEEP

“I try to leave around 8:30 or 9. I’ll go home and have a glass of wine and sit on the couch. I try to go to bed by 11. I get eight hours of sleep every night. It’s important to me.”

JUST DO IT

“I would tell anyone who wants to start a business to just start it in small ways. I was able to build up my own capital by just starting and selling my own pottery. Buying eight wheels and a kiln is no joke, so I had to borrow a little money there. It was really important for me not to take a ton of risk for this, because I needed it to always be joyful.

“My biggest contribution to sustainability could quite possibly be owning a small business in a neighborhood in a building that wasn’t previously occupied. Offering this asset to my neighborhood that I care about is extremely important.”

THE PARTICULARS

Find out more about MADE at www.madedayton.com and on instagram @made.by.dayton

The shop is located at 1619 East Fifth St in Dayton. Shop hours are Thursday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. -1 p.m.

Find out about upcoming workshops at this link.

About the Author

Hannah Kasper Levinson holds a BFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and an MFA from Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She is an art educator in Dayton, Ohio for toddler age through middle school. Her column "A Day in the Life" runs weekly in the Dayton Daily News. More info at www.hannahkasper.com.