City News Feature
November 24 2010 | Edition No. 370
My Business | Buy Art Providence: David Allyn

Toast the Holidays with this Local Artist's Cups!

If you'd rather not get pushed and shoved around big box stores on Black Friday on a frenzied chase for holiday bargains, then try shopping outside the box. The Creative Capital has a wealth of choices for the thoughtful buyer of all things hand-made, local and original. Mayor David Cicilline kicked off the annual "Buy Providence/Buy Art" campaign this week to remind us that many local retailers and individual artists are offering great products for your gift-giving deeds!

Ceramist David Allyn is one of the four featured "Buy Art" artists whose photographic transfer of the Capco Steel building can be seen on buttons throughout the city this season. His live-in studio at the Monahasset Mill, just across from where Allyn teaches "Heavy Metal Ceramics" at the Steel Yard, is a veritable workshop of stunning hand-made ceramic cups from his Thirsty line. Using a wheel-thrown, high-fire porcelain process, Allyn combines photo and silkscreen prints to make unique and winsome ceramic objects like cups, vases, and fine art tiles. You can own an original David Allyn piece, or give it to someone you love this holiday, for anywhere from $20 to $1,200. City News paid a visit to his studio for a sip of this local cup maker's lair.

What's behind your winning design for the "I Buy Art" Campaign?
I chose an image of Capco Steel, which is located a couple blocks from where I live. I think the beauty of all the mills in Providence is just something worth exploring. It's really remarkable to see all these brick, beautiful sleeping giants waiting to be awakened - very similar to where I live in the Monahasset Mill. I do a lot of photography and photo transfers on porcelain. It originally started with just a photograph, and through my process, was able to work with that photo, translate it to a three-dimensional material and do several other print methods on top of it to incorporate it with the actual photo. It's nice to have an image as a foundation for the work you're creating and to be able to manipulate it.

From your student days at RISD to your teaching days at the Steel Yard, what do you think makes Providence a creative city?
It's a hundred percent user-friendly and affordable. It's a really great place to develop and extend your network, as far as meeting, working and collaborating with other people and artists. It's also a very easy place to start promoting yourself. Once you begin doing that, it's also a very great place to enrich your own personal development. Location-wise, Providence is also very close to large metropolitan areas which make it nice because since it's more affordable here for studio space.

I'm originally from the Midwest. I fell in love with Providence. After I got my MFA at RISD, I was looking to move on and get a teaching job at a university and began to do a little shopping in that market. Then I just realized there are so many fantastic things happening in Providence that it was worth my time to stick around. The year I graduated from RISD, the Steel Yard began their redevelopment campaign and I was able to found the ceramics department here. It started out really raw. You saw metalworking next to ceramics next to glass. It was just a really exciting time and now it's just grown and become more formal. It was definitely worth staying.

I've been teaching here since 2004. I currently teach three-quarters of the year at the Steel Yard, all adult classes, and open enrollment. It's just really fantastic to get people in that might not have a lot of art background and work with them rather than having apathetic college students anyway! It's really an enriching experience for me.

What originally attracted you to this space?
I became friends with the cofounders of the Steel Yard and Monahasset Mill. So I got on board right away from the day I stepped foot on the Steel Yard. I knew it was definitely something I wanted to be involved in. It was definitely kind of a diamond-in-the-rough in a lot of ways because it was this messy, post-industrial site that had been a steelyard for a hundred years. With the right lens, I think anyone could see the beauty in this place. Knowing the people that could make it happen was really a good networking opportunity for me. It was very easy to meet them and very easy to collaborate with them on building this nonprofit. Also, the Monahasset Mill (adjacent to the Steel Yard) has been fantastic in developing a true artist community.

Why should people buy art in the Creative Capital?
Because art enriches people's lives, makes them feel good about their community and their surroundings, especially if they are local handmade objects. Beginning to break away from the Made-in-China model, I think it's really important for us to begin to take more seriously the things that we make and buy. For me, utilitarian objects - like a cup, for example - are mundane but important at the same time. It may be a relic of our past or something contemporary. I think it's very important that we use local clay, made by my hand, fired here, and then hopefully appreciated here. I use a lot of imagery from Providence and I think that reinforces the connection of the object to its location.

Did you always want to be a working artist?
Yeah but I hesitate to say it because I first went to business school for the first two-and-a-half years of my undergraduate degree. I didn't exactly know that I didn't want to be in business. I just knew I wanted to do something other than business. I kind of fell into art because I had a really fantastic ceramics professor in my undergrad years in college. Ceramics just stuck! I look back without a day of regret as far as being an artist goes.

Where do you shop for art in Providence?
I support my friends. I have a short list of folks who I visit - Karen Beebe, who's my neighbor, owns a fantastic boutique called Queen of Hearts downtown. I also buy locally from other artists that have print studios in adjacent mill buildings. It's one of those things where I can just do a studio visit, which is my preferred method because you get to talk to the artist directly. There are a lot of really fantastic artists in Providence and it's not very hard to get into their network. Some people make big things; some people make little things. But everyone's making something. And it's all easily accessible.

Describe your work as an artist.
Thirsty Cups began as a gag. It's a character that I played on several occasions. There's a persona that goes with the object. It started as a spoof. I did this little mobile drink cart and ended making cups to serve drinks at kickball matches and other art events in the city. I would go to galleries, crash art openings, and put on a pencil-thin mustache and serve drinks in these cups. Then I started getting requests from people to make other things. I wasn't really taking ceramics or object-making seriously at that time. I was post-RISD MFA and was really more into performance and the idea of the contemporary art scene. It was a really interesting opportunity for me to make that bridge back to contemporary craft as opposed to doing performance, like doing more grounded art and working with materials. I've doing this now for the last seven years, increasingly more seriously. It's always interesting to look back and know that my career started from performance and now has grown into something that has a rich following now. I really appreciate the objects that I'm making and I know that people appreciate using them too.

Where can people see your work?
They can come down to my studio here at the Monahasset Mill #104. I do studio visits all the time. Currently I have a gallery stopping by from Portland, Maine and they're picking up a bunch of stuff for the holiday season. I'm also having an open studio on December 2nd and it's open to the public. Locally, you can probably find my stuff at RISDworks, Queen of Hearts, and Craftland. But like I said, come to my studio and come to the Steel Yard. You'll definitely see me teaching or working inside the studio. Having my studio right next door is a really a fantastic opportunity to see the process to the end result and learn a little bit I hope.

It sounds like you've really found a home here. You plan on sticking around for awhile?
Yes, definitely! I'd really love to see the seeds that I planted flower. Now I can actually I can sit back a little bit and notice my work taking root. It's very exciting - so yeah, let's wait for those flowers to bloom. It's just a really great community here. So please support local art! Come by the Steel Yard for our Studio Sale on December 2nd! Also stop by the RISD Holiday Sale on December 4th! Buy local art! Look at the bottom of your goods and if it says "Made in China" put it down!

To view more of David's work, visit him online at www.davidallyn.net. For more info on local holiday shopping and list of participating local merchants, visit the Buy Providence/Buy Art website.