Cashmere artist launches community ceramics studio

CASHMERE — Amanda Goodmanson has big ideas, and they start in the Mission District of Cashmere. Right under the sign announcing what part of town you’re in, at 207 Mission Avenue, is the door that leads to The Mud Room.

For now, the space has nothing but a few building supplies and what’s going to be her secondary kiln, but if all goes well, by the end of this month, it will be Cashmere’s newest creative space, and before long, it will be an all-night hangout for folks who get off work late, for whom inspiration strikes in the middle of the night, or for friends who just want to get together in a studio with like-minded people.

Does that sound like your average ceramicist’s workshop? Goodmanson hopes it doesn’t. She’s not really a “pro” in the first place. “It’s probably my least experienced part of this whole project, is my skill in ceramics,” she says. “I took a class at the college years ago, and for whatever reason, it just kind of clicked for me. I love playing in the dirt.”

She looked for a studio to work in after she discovered her love of the art, but there was nothing near her where she was living at the time in Merritt, west of Lake Wenatchee. She realized she had to make it happen herself. “I wrote it all down,” says Goodmanson, “and got myself comfortable with a really complicated spreadsheet that had amortization schedules for loans and all this stuff… and then I said ‘It kind of feels like I’m forcing it,’ and so it sat on my computer for three years.”

She almost resigned herself to traveling and working in restaurants, but realized she needed a project, not just a job. So when the owner of the building told her other people were interested in the space she’d reserved in the Mission District — and she had a week to sign a lease or find something else to do — she bit the bullet and started a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money. If she could raise $5,000 in a week, she told herself, she’d sign the lease and get herself in gear.

She raised that in 28 hours. There was clearly a call for this here in this town. “It’s been overwhelming at times, as any business venture is, but it’s kind of wrapped in this beautiful gratitude I have for this community. I didn’t expect people to show up like that. This is being built by the community.”

That seems to be the sensibility of all of the new activity that Cashmere’s been seeing lately. The owners of the nearby Side Street complex have had a vision of community that had been seemingly missing from other new business ventures that people had been trying. But now that people are coming in not to change things, but to bring back the small town feeling of businesses that people care about, Cashmere is realizing the kind of connectedness that it’s had over the last century in pockets and spurts, but in a bigger way.

Goodmanson’s business model doesn’t rest entirely on memberships to the studio. She’ll also be selling clay that people previously had to drive across the mountains to get to folks that have a potter’s wheel at home, of whom there are more than you might imagine. Rather than having to buy as much as you can fit in your car, she says, now people can just get what they need and come back and see her when they need more.

On top of that, there will be classes, workshops, and even firing services for those who create at home and just don’t have access to a kiln.

But the business model is definitely centered less on people making perfect pieces of art, or highly functional sets of earthenware, or turning people into professionals, and more on focusing the spirit of creativity into a place that people can come and create. Ceramics is coming into its own, she observes, and she thinks it’s because no matter how good you are, when you’re done, there’s something in your hands that you made yourself. “You’re putting your hands in the dirt for hours at a time,” Goodmanson says.

In fact, just before her interview with us today, she met with members of the Community Clayworks down in Wenatchee, and they intend to work together to advance the cause, if you will.

And if you can be creative AND hang out with your friends, listen to music, drink coffee or tea, and just have fun, well all the better, says Goodmanson.

She still needs more funding to see this project into its final form. She’s holding a fundraiser on May 7th over at Yonder East in the Side Street building from 6–8 p.m. There’s going to be a silent auction, and people can come tour the studio as well as make their own pinch pot — a vase or bowl that doesn’t require a wheel to make.

It’s been a wonder to watch Cashmere grow, all because of the way it’s happening. The town isn’t getting bigger. It’s not turning to technology. It’s not building housing or trying to attract west-siders. Cashmere is putting its hands in the dirt and building the community, this time, one clay pot at a time.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media