Hot Art Studios — Attraction in Town of Varick

My wife and I took the combined pottery and sculpture class from the owner, Casey, during our stay at the nearby Spiral Stair Inn which he also owns. There is a separate review of the Inn with photos. We had a thoroughly enjoyable half day divided between throwing pots (which sounds like fun no matter what image it conjures) and creating a metal garden sculpture. We will likely do this again.

Casey’s approach to clay is distinctly different from others I’ve seen. As a result even an amateur can expect reasonable to good results from the beginning. My wife is largely unable to use her right hand for detailed work. Despite this she was able to turn 7 very respectable vessels.

I created six from the Picasso school of pottery. These featured abstract details like collapsed walls (too thin), twist marks (too aggressive), wrinkles and other advanced decorative techniques. In other words, a fail from the art perspective but a win from the “interesting fun things to do” viewpoint.

After the pots are thrown Casey finishes each piece over the course of 3 to 5 weeks. This involves letting them dry, putting your name on the bottom, sanding, firing, glazing, and shipping them to you. He currently uses two different glazing materials and you can choose or leave it up to him.

We then adjourned to the metal shop. Having thought about the project we were ready when Casey asked the setup questions: Where will it go? What do you want to build?

We both motorcycle and Arlene gardens so the answer was clear. We are building an outside garden sculpture of a motorcycle trike. This took Casey by surprise as it would be a large and ambitious project. I showed him the wheels from his “scrap” pile (one large gear and two smaller hand wheels) and he bought into the endeavor.

We ended up with a lovely trike containing the aforementioned gears, an air tank as the body, two large serving spoons as mirrors, an old hay fork as the windshield, shovels for seats, chain saw blades for the rider and passenger pegs, and other miscellaneous iron mongery to complete the image. We are going to add the license plate from Arlene’s first bike as a final personalizing touch.

Both of us ended up doing a lot of the part selection and some of the welding. This was Arlene’s first time as a welder and I think she did a credible job.

Costs – The basic course was around $65 each ($130) plus $10/pot produced for pots 2 and up. We made a total of 11 pots so it came to $230. The course envisions a small sculpture. Ours went far beyond the usual class project both in terms of time and materials used. We had a clear understanding of the project’s cost before starting.

Casey provided enthusiastic and helpful support during all phases of both the pottery and sculpture classes. We are very glad to have done it and will likely do it again.

Casey is the guy in the...

Casey was the perfect host for our group. Since there were 8 of us (4 couples), he had us doing both pottery and welding at the same time. This was one of the most unique experiences of our lives. Casey is very knowledgeable, not only in pottery and ceramics, but also quite the comedian. He kept us laughing the entire time. We were all able to create amazing pieces of art, and really learned a lot. I highly recommend everyone take advantage of this opportunity. Will definitely be back if we are ever in...

An absolutely incredible experience. We stopped on a whim and had an awesome time shooting the breeze with Casey and learning how to weld and created some wall art and a few pieces of pottery to commemorate our 1st wedding anniversary. It has taken its place in my top 5 memories with my husband! a MUST DO if you are ever in the Finger Lakes. Hell it should be a purpose to make the trip there. Thank you...