This is the final post in a three-part series on Scott McClellan, head of ceramics at the Seattle Artist League. The first post looked at the grounded physicality of his pots; the second, at the structures—musical, material, and cultural—that shape his thinking. Now we turn to the studio he built: how his quiet pragmatism and clear decisions shaped a ceramics program that makes room for difference and stays open to change.
Built from Clay
Scott McClellan earned his BFA in ceramics from Utah State University, then worked as a studio tech at Edinboro University before completing a long-term residency at Taos Clay. He went on to earn an MFA from the University of Missouri, with a minor in sculpture, followed by a two-year wood-fire residency at the Clay Studio of Missoula, where he conducted most of the glaze research that would shape his later work.
McClellan designed and built the ceramics program at the Seattle Artist League, where he now teaches and serves as head of ceramics. His teaching is clear and pragmatic. His professional practices class includes a demonstration where he boxes a pot and throws it across the room—to show the packing works. There is no performance, only proof.
The Studios He Built
McClellan’s work reflects the values at the Seattle Artist League: process over polish, presence over perfection, curiosity over certainty. Like the school he helped shape, his work invites attention, encourages variation, and holds space for uncertainty.
It’s an ethos of attention, adaptation, and making that stays responsive—always adjusting, never formulaic. It leans into friction. It finds structure in process and honesty in imperfection
McClellan doesn’t teach students to throw like he does. He built a space where they can throw how they want—with attention, with edge, without apology. What he shaped at the League isn’t a style. It’s a studio built for staying in motion.
Stay tuned—there’s one more post on the way, marking a major milestone for the League’s ceramics studio and the community it’s grown.
The Seattle Artist League is opening a clay studio and will be offering IN PERSON pottery classes in South Seattle this summer. In addition to our drawing and painting classes both online and in person, we will be offering classes in wheel throwing and handbuilding clay forms. I am tremendously excited about this. When I …
[image_with_animation image_url=”7035″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] I prefer a perfect sheet of Rives BFK, baptized in a bath of holy water and dabbed by angels wings, printed with hesitant optimism and an aneurysm when an imperfection emerges, but William Kentridge, he throws it down. That man can work the paper. Torn pieces, inked, and carefully …
I was introduced to Stuart Shils by Mitchel Albala’s landscape painter group. Every time we were grappling with how to handle the boundary where one color meets another – the edge – the group would inevitably mention Shils, then get very quiet, as if for a moment of reverence. He does have some very lovely edges. Notice …
Exercise your creativity This SAL Challenge is a vocabulary based creative challenge every day for January. Materials are artist’s choice. You can draw, paint, sew, collage, sculpt your food, anything you want. See below for today’s creative challenge. Set the timer for 20 minutes and see what happens. UGGLE An old Scots dialect word meaning …
Scott McClellan: The Studios He Built
This is the final post in a three-part series on Scott McClellan, head of ceramics at the Seattle Artist League. The first post looked at the grounded physicality of his pots; the second, at the structures—musical, material, and cultural—that shape his thinking. Now we turn to the studio he built: how his quiet pragmatism and clear decisions shaped a ceramics program that makes room for difference and stays open to change.
Built from Clay
Scott McClellan earned his BFA in ceramics from Utah State University, then worked as a studio tech at Edinboro University before completing a long-term residency at Taos Clay. He went on to earn an MFA from the University of Missouri, with a minor in sculpture, followed by a two-year wood-fire residency at the Clay Studio of Missoula, where he conducted most of the glaze research that would shape his later work.
McClellan designed and built the ceramics program at the Seattle Artist League, where he now teaches and serves as head of ceramics. His teaching is clear and pragmatic. His professional practices class includes a demonstration where he boxes a pot and throws it across the room—to show the packing works. There is no performance, only proof.
The Studios He Built
McClellan’s work reflects the values at the Seattle Artist League: process over polish, presence over perfection, curiosity over certainty. Like the school he helped shape, his work invites attention, encourages variation, and holds space for uncertainty.
It’s an ethos of attention, adaptation, and making that stays responsive—always adjusting, never formulaic. It leans into friction. It finds structure in process and honesty in imperfection
McClellan doesn’t teach students to throw like he does. He built a space where they can throw how they want—with attention, with edge, without apology. What he shaped at the League isn’t a style. It’s a studio built for staying in motion.
Stay tuned—there’s one more post on the way, marking a major milestone for the League’s ceramics studio and the community it’s grown.
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Ceramics Classes: Basic Vocabulary
The Seattle Artist League is opening a clay studio and will be offering IN PERSON pottery classes in South Seattle this summer. In addition to our drawing and painting classes both online and in person, we will be offering classes in wheel throwing and handbuilding clay forms. I am tremendously excited about this. When I …
William Kentridge Prints
[image_with_animation image_url=”7035″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] I prefer a perfect sheet of Rives BFK, baptized in a bath of holy water and dabbed by angels wings, printed with hesitant optimism and an aneurysm when an imperfection emerges, but William Kentridge, he throws it down. That man can work the paper. Torn pieces, inked, and carefully …
Stuart Shils on Color (Part 1)
I was introduced to Stuart Shils by Mitchel Albala’s landscape painter group. Every time we were grappling with how to handle the boundary where one color meets another – the edge – the group would inevitably mention Shils, then get very quiet, as if for a moment of reverence. He does have some very lovely edges. Notice …
SAL Challenge 11: UGGLE
Exercise your creativity This SAL Challenge is a vocabulary based creative challenge every day for January. Materials are artist’s choice. You can draw, paint, sew, collage, sculpt your food, anything you want. See below for today’s creative challenge. Set the timer for 20 minutes and see what happens. UGGLE An old Scots dialect word meaning …