About Us

  • Easthampton Clay was founded in October 2018 by Liz Rodriguez, a former corporate executive turned full-time potter.

    Liz knows first-hand the positive effects of clay. She has longed to host a pottery community where people could unplug, connect with one another through this beautiful craft, and get back to the earth. Clay grounds us in a way that no other medium can. It soothes us, and demands a great deal of our presence simultaneously.

    Easthampton Clay is a community based pottery studio and school in the heart of Easthampton, Massachusetts. EHC has offered the Pioneer Valley a unique opportunity for clay work and play since October 2018. We offer a range of entry points for clay enthusiasts at all levels through classes, workshops, summer camps, outreach programming and events focusing on the ceramic arts. Our space is one where artists can be creative, receive a rich and varied educational experience, and participate in a large artistic community.

    As a community of ceramic artists, we strive to cultivate a safe and inclusive space under our roof that fosters growth and development. At EHC we believe that clay can be a medium to promote connection, learning, healing, and creativity.

  • Easthampton Clay will inform students via email when their class or workshop pieces are ready for pick up, roughly 1 month from the end of your term, workshop or private lesson.

    Once alerted, students are welcome into the studio to pick up their work during student pick up hours.

    Please help yourself in and head to our student pick up shelves to find your pieces. Practice time monitors will be able to show you to student shelving upon request. Weekly student pick up hours are listed below:

    Tuesdays 12-6PM
    Sundays 8AM-6PM

  • Keeping our immunocompromised community members in mind, the studio will be mask mandatory during select hours each week. Please be aware that if you enroll in a class during one of the times listed below, you will be asked to wear a mask to class.

    Tuesdays 10AM-2PM | Saturdays 1PM-3PM Sundays 8AM-10AM

  • We are eager to engage and excited to hear from you via email (or Slack, for current students and members).

    Monday - Friday.

    Please reach out to info@easthamptonclay.com with any questions or inquiries.
    We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

    We are open for studio tours by appointment only, please email us to learn more.

EHC Equity Statement

Easthampton Clay stands with Black communities, communities of color, and all those fighting to end racism in overt and covert forms. We strive to create a welcoming environment in our studio and are proud of the inclusive and warm community that exists at EHC. There is so much more that we must do to ensure we are truly living our values as an arts organization. We are committed to devoting the time, energy, and resources to examine our implicit biases, and to support racial justice and social equity.

To further these efforts, we founded a diversity, equity and inclusion committee to examine how the studio can increase access to the space and how we can provide advocacy and education opportunities for our students, members, and leadership. In 2021, we began fundraising for the Manny Rodriguez Scholarship that will support BIPOC individuals (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) in taking classes at EHC. We commit ourselves to broadening our audience through continued outreach and scholarship opportunities. We welcome your input and voice to work with us towards these goals.

Meet Our Team

Liz Rodriguez (she/her) founded Easthampton Clay in 2018. She moved to Western Mass from the Boston area after falling in love with the area as an invited artist of the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail and Paradise City Arts. Liz studied fine arts and design at FIT in NY and business at Northeastern University in Boston. Her ceramics education began in 1994 at Mudville and subsequently Mudflat Pottery schools in Somerville, MA. In 1999, Liz became a Mudflat studio tech and a member of the board learning the innermost workings of a large pottery studio. In 2010 she left the corporate world to become a full-time ceramic artist and Mudflat teacher. Liz travelled around the country to participate in high-end craft shows and in 2017, her work was featured at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Knowing first-hand the positive effects of clay and community on one’s mental and physical health, her greatest desire was to create a space here in Western, Mass similar to that of Mudflat where a warm, diverse community thrived in a creative environment.

Liz Rodriguez
Owner, Founder, Teacher

Hadley Byrne (they/them) fell in love with clay in 2019 and has been honing their craft and unique style ever since. Hadley’s illustrative ceramics work draws from themes of daily ritual, vices, death and rebirth, the inner child, the masculine and the feminine. In addition to being an active member in the studio, Hadley has serves our community as the General Manager of Easthampton Clay. You may hear from Hadley if you reach out via email or Slack as a student, member, or otherwise! Hadley loves our clay community and is eager to hear from you.

Hadley Byrne
General Manager

Kaleigh (she/her) first discovered her passion for clay while taking an elective college course in 2016. After joining Easthampton Clay as a member in the fall of 2021, she quickly became part of the team behind the scenes. Aside from being our studio administrator, Kaleigh also teaches private lessons, mixes studio glazes, and manages our gallery space and co-op program. You can almost always find her in the studio, feel free to say hello!

Kaleigh Jarvis
Studio Operations Manager & Teacher

Kayla (she/her) has had her hands in clay since 2016 when she took an elective ceramics course and fell in love. She loves pops of color and texture which is portrayed in her functional pieces. A vessel you use to eat/drink out of should be fun to touch and bring joy visually. Kiln-loader Kayla can always be found in the studio.

Kayla McFarland
Kiln Manager & Teacher

Meet Our Teachers

Ashley
Ripolone
Teacher

Ashley (she/her) first fell in love with ceramics back in 2015 while she was in college. After a short break she found her way to Easthampton Clay and is now a full time ceramic artist. Ashley is a studio tech whose task is to mix glazes for the studio. She mostly creates work out of her home studio, but you can catch her at EHC several times throughout the week. Feel free to say hi when you see her! She loves meeting new people and hearing about your interests in clay.

Grace Morrill
Teacher

Grace (she/her) serendipitously found the art of ceramics when she chose a random elective in college; ceramics 1. A few years after college she yearned to do pottery again and in 2018 the stars aligned when she found Easthampton Clay. She's been doing pottery ever since and has made her own home studio. She will now adventure into teaching our teens class.

Michele
Shibley
Teacher

Michele Shibley (she/her) has been teaching ceramics for 18 years in the Springfield public schools. She began her clay journey in 1995 when she first took pottery in high school and fell in love with clay. When she was a Visual Art Education major at Westfield State University, Michele dove deep into three-dimensional art and focused on ceramics. After many years of making work on her own, Michele wanted to become a part of a community of likeminded clay lovers and began taking classes at Easthampton Clay in early 2022. She will now be teaching handbuilding on Monday nights.

Lucas
May
Teacher

Lucas (he/him) has been working with clay since 2017. After graduating college he completed a three year apprenticeship with Maya Machin to learn more about the wood firing process. While he still enjoys participating in the many wood firings around the valley, he is happily exploring mid- and low-fire work and all of the bright colors they have to offer. In his own practice, Lucas creates functional ceramics using both the wheel and handbuilding techniques that explore themes of identity, relationships, and connection. He finds teaching to be a wonderfully rewarding and inspiring addition to his personal studio work.

Sophia
Aussant
Teacher

Sophia (she/her) first started working with clay her freshman year of high school and quickly fell in love with the art form. She has since continued her studies apprenticing with a number of ceramic artists in Massachusetts and Vermont, learning more about her craft and finding her own artistic style. Her work is vibrant and whimsical, often featuring unique and detailed surface design. Sophia started teaching officially in 2020 and eventually found herself at Easthampton Clay!