Before LaGrange Park art teacher Ryan Bothwell learned how to do pottery, he had “zero interest” in the subject, he said. Now, Bothwell runs his own pottery studio out of Brookfield and teaches the art to young students in and out of his classroom.
Bothwell is the owner of Bothwell Pottery, which opened in 2021. The business, offering individual pottery classes and weeklong ceramic summer camps as well as educational clay parties, first operated out of a basement apartment in a building Bothwell and his wife owned.
This summer, Bothwell has based the camps out of his own classroom at Forest Road Elementary School in LaGrange Park while searching for a new permanent studio. He said he was grateful to the administrators at Forest Road and LaGrange School District 102 as well as the custodial staff at the school: “Pottery camps make a lot of dust,” he said.
After a slower start during the pandemic, Bothwell said the studio has hit a cap on the number of students it serves during summer camps each year.
“At first, especially, I got a lot of kids from Brookfield schools that maybe had a lesser or not as much of an art program, and then as time went on, more and more people found out about it,” he said. “That first summer, I might have had one week or two weeks of camps, maybe 15 to 20 kids. Now, it’s grown; the last two summers, I’ve had close to 150 kids, this summer and last summer, come through the studio.”
He said he’s even taught some of his own students over the summer.
Bothwell got his start in pottery well after he became an art teacher nearly 30 years ago.
“In 2014, there was a local studio that wanted someone to teach their pottery classes. I said, ‘I really don’t know. All I do is little pitch pot projects and little things. I don’t really do ceramics.’ They said, ‘No, no, no, we want a teacher to make sure the kids are managed, and we’ll help you with the ceramic side of it,’” he said. “While they were teaching me, I would teach the kids, and, simultaneously, they let me take classes at the studio for a discounted price, and it seemed fun, so I started doing it.”
Bothwell began to make his own pottery. At first, he said he primarily made mugs.
“I was also home brewing at the time, and I thought it would be quaint to drink my homemade beers out of my homemade mugs. Turns out, I was able to start producing quite a quantity, and I would sell at beer festivals and local breweries,” he said. “I got much better at making the pottery than I did the beer, so I quit making beer and stuck with the pottery.”
The ceramicist said he quickly fell in love with the art, leading him to throw clay on the wheel deep into the night after he was the only one in the studio. After some time, that desire matured into wanting to open his own studio and share the skills he had developed.
“I’ve always been an elementary, middle school-age art teacher, so it was a natural transition for me to take the passion that I had grown over about five years that I was making and selling pottery to eventually start offering classes and camps,” he said.
While it’s not the only thing he teaches, Bothwell said ceramics have found their way into his classroom when school is in session, too.
“I have a comprehensive curriculum. I teach drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, printmaking, weaving even. Anything you can think of from your elementary [school] experience when you were making art, I try to introduce that to the kids throughout their six years here, and it does include a little bit of pottery,” he said. “We have a lot less time when it comes to the school day. I only see the kids for about an hour a day. I still introduce them to a couple of clay projects every year … I’m lucky enough to have the equipment and the tools here at school to do projects like that.”
Now that he’s operated the studio for several years, Bothwell said it mostly appeals to children who find themselves drawn to pottery, though students of all experience levels are welcome.
“They just enjoy doing it. As I’ve been teaching more and more kids, I have more advice, more projects and more ideas to give them,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of kids who come in, and they have continually taken classes with me for the last three or four years, and it’s really cool to watch those kids grow.”
