Tom Trulove whacked a thick slab of beige clay multiple times on a counter in the renovated ceramics studio in Manhattan Beach.
“What are you going to make?” one of his students asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something tall.”
With his wet, clay-stained hands, the ceramics instructor motioned toward the new sinks and six-foot tall yellow damp cabinets, which house and keep moist projects that students are working on.
In the spring, Manhattan Beach City Council approved more than $25,000 in renovations to the ceramics studio, which was built in 1992.
“It’s a massive improvement of what we had,” Trulove said, adding that the old equipment was “a little beyond its prime.”
He took his now-flattened chunk of clay to the pottery wheel and proceeded to make a wide, curvy pot with entwined twists carved across the center.
Long-time students and residents of Manhattan Beach sent letters to and spoke in front of the council about the conditions of the existing equipment, including cabinets that had been replaced the previous year.
“They seem to be already rusting, and the sliding doors stick and are almost impossible to open. In addition, the clay is not kept damp,” wrote Jill Weisbord, a 38-year Manhattan Beach resident, in February. The old cabinets were “a danger, especially to the children who attend classes,” she added.
In addition to the new cabinets, the city provided new sinks and plastic storage lockers. “Now the studio really has a solid, unified feeling to it,” said Mary Mallman, the ceramics studio manager. New shelves and tables should be built by the end of the year, she said.
“The finished lockers are so much nicer and cleaner,” said ceramics student Jan Morris.
The studio offers eight- to nine-week-long classes to adults and children on weekdays, evenings and weekends.
Mallman credits her students for the “healthier, less-dust-collecting” studio. “It’s been fantastic, really, that the students value the program enough that they went to the city and they said, ‘This is something that we like, and this is something that we want to keep. Invest in this please,” she said.
