Central offers many unique and diverse clubs for anyone who’s willing to spend an hour of their time and meet new people. The Clay Club meets every Monday this quarter at 3:30 p.m. in Randall Hall’s painting studio.

“Clay Club offers an experience outside of the classroom for students to bond and create friends with similar interests. For students who want to play with the [clay] and get a sense of how responsive it is, it’s a great opportunity for non art majors,” said the club’s adviser, Stephen Robison, an associate professor of art here at Central.  

At Clay Club, students try their hand at spinning clay on a wheel or learning how to work with it. It’s a chance for ceramic students to practice outside of class to improve their throwing technique. Clay Club not only practices throwing ceramics on the wheel, they also sell bowls, cups and other objects they make as a fundraiser, Robison said.

“The fundraisers have helped them go on field trips to Portland and Seattle to experience museums and ceramic exhibitions. The Clay Club has attended several openings at galleries in both cities. They have also raised money to go to the National Conferences,” Robison said. “The fundraising events have also helped them bring in several visiting artists in ceramics. They are planning on having a Mother’s Day sale coming up.”

Networking is not easy for many people on campus. However, the Clay Club helps students network and gain entrepreneurial knowledge.

The president of the club and art major, Carita Murphy, enjoys being a part of a hobby that entices people to find their creative qualities, open up more and share their artistic values with each other.

“We’re trying to get people together to just make work, and sell the work, and raise money for visiting artists,” Murphy said.

Everyone is aware of how difficult it is for aspiring artists to gain considerable attention from their work, and Central’s Clay Club does a fine job at exposing student’s work to doors that can open up to opportunities for the creators .

“It’s our goal to kind of have the artists take home some of the money because they made the work, and just how to price their work, and I don’t know, trying to sell work as an artist is rough,” Murphy said.