Last year the Knight Foundation made a $1,000,000 grant to United States Artists, an organization that celebrates and supports the individual artist in America. Each year it selects 50 artists from eight disciplines and awards each of them a $50,000 no-strings-attached fellowship. The Knight grant will provide funding for 18 Knight fellows in the 26 Knight communities. Each Knight award comes with an additional $5,000 grant for the artist to create a community engagement event.  Ceramicist Kukuli Velarde is the first United States Artist Knight fellow and she has parlayed her grant into a new ceramics workshop in the basement of the West Kensington Ministy Church in Philadelphia.  Kukuli’s enthusiasm and dedication to the project and impressive and infectious – read below for her first-hand account of the project thus far and click here to see some photos of the class…

ByKukuli Velarde Doug (my husband & colleague) and I began the ceramic class you all have been hearing a bit about, just yesterday. Doug and I are thrilled with the opportunity to share something we love so much as working with clay with our fellow neighbors. We hope, that this can continue and grow, but we are aware it will take time and patience; but the first step has been done…

I wanted to tell you a bit about the class. We will have in total 7 students. We have a mother  and her two girls,  Marisol jr.  who is extremely excited with learning to work with clay and her sister Gloria who didn’t want to participate at the beginning but at the end of the class was making cups for her aunt!  We also have another mother who has an amazing artistic talent and her son Sammy,  who never dreamed of working with clay but  yet he is working hard and imagination is running free! There is also an ex elementary teacher who is sponsoring a 12-year-old boy Anthony who used to be her pupil years ago. She is strong, she organizes the town watch! She is a beautiful spirit and a example of strength  She is always gentle and kind with everybody, she is an inspiration.

I hope you don’t mind me telling you about our 7 students, but I thought it was a good idea to let you know who they are beyond a number. It has been a lot of work and headaches but at the end of the day it feels right to provide the possibility of enjoyment and hopefully some sense of achievement through the making of art. Well, I should stop, we are just beginning, We hope next summer we can have more classes and more people but let’s see how it goes first! I will update the photo album so that you can see the progress of this class.

Thanks Amada and United States Artists and Dennis and Knight Foundation for allowing this dream to start. Thanks Chad and Adan and the Presbyterian Church for offering space and your trust on us! Thanks Kenny for the electrical work that gave us enough light to begin right away. Thanks Kris for you and Fred will guide me to pitch the case of ‘a new kiln for the new studio’ through United States Artists website initiative. I will work hard for it, I hope we get it!!

Thanks to all,

Doug and Kukuli p.s. this is a link to a gallery with photos, from the transformation of the space to our first class. We paint some walls, we put a bit of sheetrock, we removed lumber, built tables …..needs more work, but hey, it is a beginning!  😉