The Clay Studio | Clay as Care

Ceramic Art and Wellbeing

Oct 9th - Dec 31st, 2025

The relationship between ceramic art and health is examined through an exhibition, scientific research, a publication, and public programs. The project considers ways in which care manifests in ceramic art and how viewing art and working with clay can promote personal and communal health. The exhibition features artists whose practices address healing, rest, and resilience, including Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Pew Fellow Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ehren Tool, and Maia Chao.

Co-Curators Jennifer Zwilling and Nicole Pollard will work closely with The Clay Studio Exhibition Council, partners in the health research field, and the four lead artists to create an exhibition and space that reflects the values of care that we see as inherent in the act of making art with clay.

Clay as Care is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Thursday October 9th | 1pm - 2pm

Clay and Conversations with Ehren Tool

Join us to talk with Clay as Care artists Ehren Tool about his artistic career, his time here at The Clay Studio, his dream of building and deconstructing a clay bunker, and his claim that he "just makes cups".

Saturday, October 25th | 9am - 4pm EST

Clay as Care Symposium

Join us to hear from our amazing partners and featured artist; supported by our wonderful guest, key-note speaker activist and author Tricia Hersey, and a panel moderated by host and executive producer of WHYY's "The Pulse" Maiken Scott.

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Saturday, October 25th 2025 | 5pm - 7pm EST

Clay as Care Reception

Just us for our celebratory reception of our fall major exhibition Clay as Care. Our amazing artists, and partners will be in attendance making the event extra special!

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Thursday November 20th | 1pm - 2pm EST

Clay and Conversations with Jennifer Ling Datchuk

Join us to talk with Clay as Care artist Jennifer Ling Datchuk about her artistic career and her time creating an intimate installation on fertility, grief, and growth for Clay as Care.

Thursday December 4th | 1pm - 2pm EST

Clay and Conversations with Adebunmi Gbadebo

Join us to talk with Resident Alumni and Clay as Care artist Adebunmi Gbadebo about her artistic career, her time here at The Clay Studio, and the vulnerability of sharing the exploration and honoring of her family's history with her work.

Thursday December 18th | 1pm - 2pm EST

Clay and Conversations with Maia Chao

Join us to talk with Clay as Care artists Maia Chao about her artistic career and her time here at The Clay Studio filming for the meditative reflection on working in ceramics.

The Clay Studio is excited to announce that we have been awarded a major grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to support Clay as Care, an exhibition that examines how care manifests in ceramic art. The grant offers project funding that will support the Clay as Care exhibition, research, publication, and symposium in 2025.

At the core of Clay as Care is the work of Adebunmi Gbadebo, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Maia Chao, and Ehren Tool, groundbreaking artists who address care, healing, rest, and resilience in their work. These artists acknowledge and access qualities of care for themselves in making their art, and therefore communicate aspects of care to their audiences. Gbadebo harvests clay from the plantation where her family was enslaved to create vessels as an act of healing for the memory of her ancestors. Datchuk creates work with images representing her journey with fertility-related medical procedures, and builds spaces for contemplation. Tool, a veteran, has made over 250,000 cups during his artistic life and says that his “process is therapeutic - and the cups are a kind of catharsis in clay.”

In addition to the artists, co-curators Jennifer Zwilling and Nicole Pollard, along with our Community Exhibition Council, staff, members of the care movement, and scientists researching the connections between art and care, will explore how we may offer the visitor ways to engage in acts that combine clay and care within the gallery. The exhibition will push beyond traditional methods of displaying art to create new systems of engagement for visitors that include viewing, creating, and engaging in moments of rest.

Care is at the center of The Clay Studio’s ethos since its inception in 1974; we are excited to explore this idea with our collaborators as we begin our next half century. We are deeply grateful to The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage for their major support for this project.

Clay as Care has been supported by

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.

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Exhibition Council

Marilyn Rodriguez
Annie Moss
Ah-Young Kim
Meliza Reynoso
Michael Clemmons
Jennifer-Navva Milliken
Katie Sorenson
Jill Bonovitz
Cesar Viveros
Janice Merendino
Nancy Hays
Judith Tannenbaum
Franz Raebauer
Nitza Rosario
Charity Thackston

Project Partners

Anjan Chatterjee, UPenn Neuroaesthetics
Rachel Brandoff, Jefferson Art Therapy
Girija Kaimal, Drexel Creative Arts Therapy

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Clay as Care

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