A Survey of Pottery Tours

In-person research on contemporary potters and pottery tours came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To keep her research moving forward, Meredith developed an online survey to collect information from anyone who has participated in a pottery tour. This anonymous survey focuses on current, past, and future pottery tours, including how they were formed, how they are organized, and the experiences of hosts and other participants. Anyone who has organized or participated in a pottery tour as an artist is encouraged to take the survey – it can be completed multiple times if you have participated in multiple tours!

Questions?

Contact meredith@caughtupinclay.com with any questions about the survey or this research topic.

Background on this project:

In 2018 Meredith received an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress for her ethnographic research project, Production Potters of the Midwestern United States. The aim was to document the occupational folklore of a variety of full-time production potters in the Midwest, with particular emphasis on those who participate in guilds, pottery tours, or other ceramics communities. Documentation included filmed and/or audio recorded interviews, photographs of artists, studios, and pottery, and scans of print materials used by the artists. Online access to these materials is now available through the American Folklife Center. After completing the Archie Green Fellowship, Meredith became interested in documenting more details about the many pottery tours throughout the US.

Meredith’s Research Interests

Meredith focuses primarily on collaboration and community development in the arts, exploring ways that professional artists build support for one another within their vocation and their region; her focus thus far has been on Midwestern potters and Hoosier filmmakers. Published in August 2020, her book The Michiana Potters: Art, Community, and Collaboration in the Midwest highlights the work of a group of potters in northern Indiana and southern Michigan and serves as a case study to understand ways that professional artists can build a sense of community and support one another.

Although Meredith’s scholarship is primarily concerned with artist/professional communities, her research interests include a variety of related topics, including: arts start-ups, folk arts, occupational folklore, queer folkloristics, embodiment, and the interplay of informal and institutional knowledges. In line with these interests, Meredith is a co-editor of Advancing Folkloristics, published in 2021, a volume seeking to advance topics such as queer, feminist, anti-racist, and postcolonial scholarship in folkloristics.

Learn more about Meredith’s work with this list of publications and presentations.