CraftNet Global

Steve Lloyd directs the clay program at Haywood Community College, one of the founding members of CraftNet.  We talked briefly in mid-April with Steve and his wife Becky as they were driving up I-85 on their way to the Smithsonian Craft Show at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.  

The two artists were planning to set up their booth at the show and display their collaboratively created, intricately carved porcelain work.  Steve, whose enthusiasm and energy for both teaching and ceramics often can seem boundless, also was looking forward during the weekend to teaching a workshop on throwing porcelain bottle forms.

Steve and Becky have been making pots side-by-side since they originally met in the clay studio at Beloit College during the 1980s.  They first began to work collaboratively, however, only about five years ago.  Given his love of exploring form, as well as his passion for the very technical aspects of ceramics, Steve had been focusing chiefly on making wood-fired vessels.  Becky, on the other hand, had been hand carving intricate patterns on ceramic work since about 2000.  She also enjoys working with glazes, while Steve admits that he does not.  It seems only fitting that they would eventually recognize the complementary nature of their compatible skill sets and interests.

The results of their ongoing collaboration, which can be viewed at their shared gallery on the CraftNet website, are strikingly beautiful both in their graceful forms and the intricate dark designs etched across the surface of the porcelain.  Becky says she draws inspiration from nature and from Japanese woodcuts, while Steve, who mostly works intuitively with the clay in his hands, typically finds new ideas surfacing in response to the images that he presents in his classes at Haywood on the histories of both traditional and contemporary pottery. He also cites as an influence the work of the English potter, Hans Coper, who settled in Britain after emigrating from Germany in the late 1930s.

Even as Steve acknowledges that his teaching career is one of the primary catalysts for his own creative work, he also enjoys working with younger artists.  “One of the most satisfying things about teaching at Haywood,” Steve said, “is just seeing so much growth take place in our students’ work over such a short period of time.  It’s a very intense program.  Students don’t have a lot of general college requirements outside of their work in the clay program.  We have some graduate students who couldn’t throw pots at all at the very beginning, and now they’re doing great work.”

Another strong feature of the Haywood clay program, Steve notes, is the school’s strong emphasis on marketing and entrepreneurship.  His own arts education at Beloit College was strong on teaching studio skills and at instilling the belief that one could do anything that one set one’s heart upon, at least in terms of making a living making art.  He credits one of his teachers there at Beloit, Mike Weber, with having served as an important mentor for his own career. That training, however, did not include anything like the nuts-and-bolts approach to arts entrepreneurship that students find at Haywood. 

“Our students take a sophisticated craft marketing course in the fall of their second year that Haywood designed collaboratively with North Carolina REAL Enterprises,” Steve said. “That training feeds directly into a spring course about Craft Enterprises.  By the time they have finished with those courses, they have a business plan in hand, built upon a REAL Enterprises template. Patricia Smith does great work teaching them all of those professional business skills.”

Over the past year, Steve has worked closely with the CraftNet working group that designed and developed the new modular curriculum for teaching artists how better to use the Internet to further their own business goals.  “I think it brings together a lot of information that might otherwise be sort of fragmented within our individual member schools,” he observed.  “The real value of Ecommerce for Artists is that now we have an online resource that we can use as an outline to round out our individual programs.”

Reflecting upon his own career as an artist, teacher, and entrepreneur, Steve says that his own father, too, has been a strong positive influence upon the way he has integrated these different aspects of his professional life.  Until he retired, Tim Lloyd taught metalsmithing and jewelry at Carleton College in Minnesota.  He is still an actively working artist these days, mostly working in silver.  So it is clear that Steve’s passion for teaching draws upon both his family lineage and the influence of his own master teachers.  “What I like about teaching is the intensity of working with students,” Steve affirmed.  “I want to be a role model for others like Mike Weber was for me.  I want to be enthusiastic about the process of making art.  I want to encourage students to work hard, master the skills they need, and pursue a life in art.

You can check out Steve and Becky's CraftNetGlobal gallery here.