New Harmony Clay Project

I first rolled into New Harmony on a Sunday night. I was told this small historic town is a popular destination for weddings and other group events over the weekends. The town remains very quiet and most things are closed on Mondays and Tuesday, but as the week goes on, more people pop up and businesses open for business. The people in New Harmony are mostly pleasant older white folks with not a lot of other diversity. The first day I was there, I spent my time walking through the town, going to different historic destinations there. Walking around, the interactions I had with the locals there was positive and met with friendly curiosity to where I was from and what I was doing in New Harmony. I concluded that residents who would want to come and thrive at this program would be artists looking for time away from hubbub, looking more at the residency as a retreat to simple days of nature walking, getting to know a small cohort of co-residents, and spending most of your time exploring and creating in the studio.

There is an excellent coffee shop in town owned and run by an extremely kind and friendly guy I had the pleasure of conversing with. There’s also a new ice cream shop that just opened a few weeks ago where the ice cream was pretty good and the atmosphere of the shop was “hip” where I could see it being a nice place to take a break from the studio. Around the corner there is an American Legion and a tavern that are also nice places to take a break and hang out around people in town. Nearest grocery store is 30 minutes away, where there is a larger town.

I got to meet with the current residents, Katie Botterman and Christie Cooper the second day I was there. They showed me around the studio, which was clean, organized and well labeled. The soda/salt kiln looked like it was in good shape and the raw materials available to the residents were abundant and easily accessed. They also gave me a tour of their housing, which was a beautiful, historic four bedroom house. It is cleaned and maintained by hired professionals in town. The house is very cool, fully furnished and a short five minute walk from the studio. Next door is a neat “roofless church” where weddings occasionally take place. If your looking for time away to really focus on your studio practice with little distractions and very little expenses, this would be a nice place to look into.