Where do identity, community, and craft meet? Summer 2024 artist-in-residence Etty Anderson explores that intersection in this feature.
Etty Anderson (they/them) poses with vessel made during their Watershed residency.
For a craft that is so deeply immersed in tactile physicality, ceramics hold the unique ability to create something more amorphous and ideational: community. At least, that’s what queer artist Etty Anderson thinks. Etty (they/them) is an organizer and resident for Watershed’s 2024 Summer Residency VI: Queering Mud. We met with them earlier this year to chat about their background and creative process as a ceramicist who works from marginalized identities.
For a craft that is so deeply immersed in tactile physicality, ceramics hold the unique ability to create something more amorphous and ideational: community.
Etty’s passion for ceramics arose after many years of experimenting with creative pursuits. Raised in the Vancouver punk scene, they decided not to pursue a secondary degree in the arts, despite the pressure of many. Instead, Etty toured with music, drew, photographed, and even sustained a fashion line for four years. When they moved to the East Coast, they started an underground dinner club called Vegan Secret Supper (which they’re still running today, seventeen years later). From there, through classes and work exchanges, Etty began to work in clay. “I had this feeling that if I ever started to do clay, it would overrun my life. I figured I would wait to try it until I retired,” says Etty, laughing. “Now look at me.” They now work in ceramics full-time, selling work through their Montreal-based business, YYY.
Some of Etty’s funky, colorful vessels. Photo credit to artist.
As Etty began their dive into the ceramics world, they soon noticed a gap in their experience. “I was always the only ceramics person [in art spaces], so I was never around that community,” says Etty. “Or, if I was in a ceramics space, so many of the ceramicists knew each other through school and academic programs. I ended up feeling very separate.” That lack of overlap was exactly how they found the spark that drives their work: community.
From their supper club to the number of maker spaces they’ve worked in over the years, Etty loved how creatives could come together to aid, support, and collaborate. “Community is everything,” says Etty. “We’re all teaching and learning. I would never want to be alone doing whatever it is I decide to be immersed in.” At the same time, they acknowledge the exclusion LGBTQ+ people can face from these creative communities.
That’s why Etty proposed their “Queering Mud” residency theme to Watershed. Etty realized that even though a large LGBTQ+ clay community existed online, those ceramicists were rarely able to create together in person. Providing artists, no matter their identity, with time and space has always been at the core of Watershed’s mission. During the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Watershed created a workshop for people who were living with the illness to find support, create, and come together during a period when many faced extreme social isolation. Watershed is honored to help hold space for LGBTQ+ artists to gather. As Etty put it, “[queer ceramicists] should have this space together…Yes, existing, but also pushing work into new spaces.”
Etty works with fellow artist-in-residence in Watershed’s Windgate Studio.
For a community that is so often denied a place to comfortably gather and fully be themselves, safe creative space can be wonderfully liberating. “There’s something different when you can see yourself represented in other people. To be in an actual physical space together, to feel so comfy within that too,” says Etty. Their point is clear: to be in community with artists that relate to your lived experience can be life-changing.
“[Queer ceramicists] should have this space together…Yes, existing, but also pushing work into new spaces.”
With every colorful ceramic vessel Etty creates, they are also creating space. Space for themself, but also space for the LGBTQ+ artists who will come after them. “Seeing now how much things have changed in the generation below me, I’m discovering how I was part of carving an easier path for them,” says Etty, “and they’re going to carve a better path for the next. That’s something. That is pride.” Etty’s work serves as a reminder ceramics can be more than just shaping clay: it can shape lives.