Twenty Years at the Wheel with Aaron Winston

Aaron Winston has been with Groundworks longer than it's been Groundworks. He started as a volunteer at the Boulder Pottery Lab in 2005, and today he's our Artistic Director, guiding classes in wood, metal, glass, print, and clay.

We sat down with Aaron to talk about what has stayed constant over two decades and where we're headed next.

Can you please introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Groundworks?

Aaron: My name is Aaron Winston. I am the artistic director here at Groundworks. I teach classes. I help the studios in all manner of ways. I manage and work with the studio managers and staff to make sure that the classes are running the way we want and that the studios are operating efficiently.

I also schedule workshops and decide what we're showing in the gallery and how those shows look. So a whole range of things.

How long have you been the artistic director and also how long have you been with Groundworks?

Aaron: I've been with Groundworks longer than it's been Groundworks. We used to be Studio Arts Boulder.

Studio Arts Boulder was formed in 2009. And I became a Studio Arts Boulder employee in 2015. Before that, I started working at the Boulder Pottery Lab for the City of Boulder because it was part of the Parks and Rec department, and that was in 2006. So I've been working in this job in some capacity in our programs for 20 years.

What was the first role that you had with the organization? And how did you find Groundworks/The Pottery Lab?

Aaron: I was hired as a part-time instructor, but before that, at the end of 2005, I became a volunteer. So I started working as a volunteer teaching assistant in a class, and was hired in April 2006 to be an instructor and work part time at the pottery lab.

I first taught in our youth programs: the parent-child classes, now called Family Clay. And then I quickly started teaching in the adult program, and it just kind of went on from there.

When I moved here at the end of 2005, I immediately started looking for a studio that I could work in, both to make my own work and because I knew that I wanted to be active and employed in a studio if possible. So I started volunteering as soon as I found a place. I showed up a week after I moved here, I think, and contacted folks at the pottery lab and started.


What is your artistic background?

Aaron: I've always known I wanted to be an artist.

I spent an inordinate amount of time drawing and making things as a child, and had really amazing support from teachers starting in elementary school. That allowed me to focus on art making. I was drawing on my shoes and on folders and on spelling tests and all that stuff. And so I went to school for art. I knew I wanted to go to college for art.

So I did an undergraduate degree in fine art, mostly printmaking, but really a basic foundation in painting and drawing. And then I went to graduate school for printmaking. I spent a long time doing both of those degrees: five years in undergrad and four years in graduate school. So for nine years I studied art academically.

And when I was done, I didn't think I was ready to be a teacher. All of my fellow grad students were applying for adjunct jobs at universities and trying to get on a tenure track. And I really felt like I needed some experience out in the world before I was qualified to do that for myself. So I started working with an industrial designer who was the husband of a friend of mine from undergraduate school.

I did that for a year or so, and then got into pottery here, and it's been that ever since. I should say, when I was in graduate school studying painting, drawing and printmaking, I found a class in the art education department, actually, that was teaching a method of throwing porcelain in a Japanese style.

I became entranced in that process and took it for a semester for out-of-area credit. And then I just went back every semester. So for the rest of the time that I was in graduate school studying printmaking, I was also working in the porcelain studio. I got completely hooked on clay. And that's been, until the opening of this building, the focus of my career.

I love that, and clay wasn't really on your radar before.

Aaron: It was totally not on my radar. I had to take a year of ceramics in undergraduate school. I hadn't done any in high school. I had never touched clay before undergraduate school, and I'd say my professor was a lousy teacher. That's not really fair to him.

He was an amazing sculptor. He worked with clay in other ways but didn't like to throw. And we had to take a throwing class and I was terrible at it. I was really good at trimming, so I made it through that class and I was like, I'm done. I don't want to do clay anymore.

And it wasn't until graduate school that I saw something that just blew my mind. And then all those skills came back, and I realized how much I actually really enjoyed that whole process and how meaningful it was to me in my life, and how meaningful it would become. Clay is such an amazing material to work with.

It's so grounding in so many ways, and it's so immediately present. I was spending all this time in grad school thinking, reading critical theory about art and writing about it and working on my thesis show, which is a really heady thing to be doing. And I was teaching and I was doing all these things, and on my way to the ceramics studio, because I didn't have much time to mess around, I would go through the steps of this process in my mind.

So by the time I had gotten there, I had already thrown a bunch of pots in my mind so I could sit down and be completely there and engaged. You have to just let go, sort of intellectually, in order to really work the clay properly. You just have to be in your body. And so it was an extremely therapeutic process, given the intense academic work that I was doing at the time. It was extremely liberating and therapeutic for me.

When you first stepped into the artistic director role, what did you hope Groundworks could become, and how close is the organization today to what you had pictured?

Aaron: That's a hard question because it's looking back, and it's easy to pick and choose the things that I think I wanted to have happen. I never really answered the question about when I became the director. It was at the end of 2015 that I became the pottery lab director.

And later, when we really started building the programs out and the concept of this new building and all these mediums became an imminent thing, I was made the artistic director. My goal was aligned with what the goals were for Studio Arts Boulder and the mission at that time, and now Groundworks: to provide education and space for people who are interested in mediums that are really, really hard to do on your own, either through the need for really expensive equipment, really big equipment or just an incredible expense of money and time and energy.

Take ceramics. You can't really do ceramics from start to finish on your own. You can hand build on your own, but most people really want and gravitate towards wheel work. I was one of those people. So you need a wheel and then you need space, and you have all this clay, and you have to clean yourself somehow, and you have to recycle the clay, and then you have to fire the work. Every one of the mediums that we offer at some point requires a really huge investment of equipment, time, energy and space.

So those are hard things to do on your own, and it makes them inaccessible to a lot of folks. And so I really wanted to see a space where people could explore their interest in these things in a low-commitment kind of way. And if they find joy in it, to then have a place to come back over and over and over again and really develop that expertise, and maybe more than expertise, just live in that joy of making. Any of us who've done any art form know it's such a critical part of being human to create. And a lot of us have jobs where we are so removed from that that we get this experience very little. So designating some time for yourself and coming in and then having that sort of revelation of how good this stuff is for you is really something I think everybody should be exposed to.

But if I look a little deeper than that, I think my own life was changed so dramatically by incredible teachers who acknowledged the interest and the skill that I had in art, and I was given space and support to develop those things for myself. It really helped me find a place in the world.

I think art is so central to culture. It's the way we record our experiences in the world and the way that we communicate and preserve them, for the future and for each other. And it's also so central to so many things. Knowing that it was something I could pursue for myself saved my life.

That sounds figurative, and it largely is, but it's also literal. I grew up in Casper, Wyoming, which has one of the highest rates of suicide for young men in the country. It was really easy to start to feel trapped there. I was also going through all kinds of family and really dramatic, intense things as a teenager, and finding this thing within myself that I was good at but also loved really pulled me out of what could have been physically and emotionally dangerous situations. It gave me a goal and a way to live in the world.

Do you think that Groundworks is delivering that?

Aaron: Yeah, different parts of it at different scales. I think we're amazing at providing spaces for people to explore and be curious and also then find a way to engage with that. That works for anybody in any situation.

And we work really hard to make these things accessible to people, whether the barriers are physical, monetary or time. We have lots of options for when our classes are, and lots of ways to start, from a one-off class to a full eight-week class to more.

And we get students that repeat over and over and over again. But I think one of the things I'm most proud of as an employee, as a person and certainly as a director of this organization, is the way we've mentored youth through this process. Kids that have started in our programs at six years old, taking classes over and over again, finding a spot here that gives them something they're not getting in the rest of their lives. It has changed their lives.

A handful of these people come back year over year and then become volunteers here, then get paid to start teaching camps, then get paid as an instructor and eventually become full-time staff. It's only a handful of folks. But for each one of those people, that's a huge, life-changing event.

And even if these kids that we teach, and even young adults and older adults, may not become professional artists, that's not really the point. That's a possibility here, and we can support that. But it changes their appreciation and understanding of art. No matter what they go on to do and bring to the world, they have an inherent understanding after taking classes here. I think it's important to everyone in some way, and it does change their lives. So I feel like we make this subtle impact every day, and we make these huge impacts as well. Different scales for different people. But I think we do a really good job at all of those things.


Thinking about defining moments in your tenure, are there moments, students or classes that make you think, “this is why I do this?”

Aaron: I do. The teen class for me is one of those. I've been teaching the teen pottery class for I don't know how many years now. When I was first asked to teach the teen class and develop it, I was a little scared about taking on that responsibility. I was a pretty young man at that time myself, and didn't know if I would have the chops or the presence to really work in that environment with those kids and be a good instructor.

And I found out really quickly that it really resonated with me: the particular age group of pre-teen and teen kids, that 12- or 13-to-16 range. I feel like I connect really well and have made some pretty significant impacts in kids' lives, and that's really meaningful to me. In my own personal experience, I was really influenced by teachers and really wanted to return that favor. So that's been super important to me.

I've also found that teaching a porcelain class that teaches a little bit of the process that I learned and exposes people to it is a really exceptional thing to be doing. I focus on these really fundamental things about throwing any clay that I think change how people, even if they don't continue in the process, approach different materials and how they interact with clay as it spins on the wheel. It's some very small changes that affect how they throw forever. And so I think that's really, really fun.


Is there anything from the early days of Groundworks, or pre-Groundworks, that you feel has naturally carried through to how we are today, whether it's the energy, the people, the approach to teaching, the philosophy…? And is there anything you’ve had to work to protect?

Aaron: That's a good question. The first thing that really pops up in my mind is that there's a long, long history to the clay program in particular. Groundworks, originally Studio Arts Boulder, adopted this existing program that has been part of the City of Boulder for over 70 years now. The Parks and Rec department created this program in the early '50s.

Betty Woodman became part of it and really turned it into something extraordinary as a city program, which was a unique model in the country and is still fairly unique, actually. But I think what carries over from that is this community art studio feel and vibe where it's not academic. No one's graded.

So there's an informality to it that allows people to fail and at the same time be supported and celebrated for those failures. That's really how we learn: we make all these mistakes and we accumulate the fixes, and we learn from those things. And the particular type of environment that a good community studio creates is that anybody can come from any background at any age.

They can show up and be met where they are with that process and learn something in that environment in a way that lets them choose how much they ask to be critiqued or how much they engage in the teaching process. So you have this sort of character to the educational aspect of it that just facilitates, I think, anybody finding a way to really learn something unique about themselves and about how they interact with the process, and they can dive into it at any level they want.

That's a pretty extraordinary thing to have outside of academia. But the other thing that happens in these studios is that you have all of these different people, whether the backgrounds are different because of age, socioeconomic background, race, ability or gender, all existing in this space.

And there's something common that brought us in from the beginning. So regardless of who we are outside of these studios or what our beliefs are or how intense we are about our beliefs, we all showed up here because we have something in common. So right away it breaks down these barriers. And that's been something that we have been really careful to carry forward.

We don't want to take that away. We try really hard to create a space that welcomes everybody and celebrates the things that we have in common. That's a really beautiful thing. It's the most important thing, in my opinion.

Groundworks brings wood, metal, glass, print and clay all together under one roof. With so many people from different backgrounds, how do we make sure that people from all of those backgrounds feel welcome in the space?

Aaron: That's a tricky one to answer. I think some of that's just inherent. We all have this drive to celebrate the things that we love and that we're passionate about and teach them to people and get them excited about it, too. I think that part of it is maybe the biggest part, the key element: when people come in, we as instructors, staff and administrators of this organization are passionate about what we're doing and we're so excited for them to be there.

And we communicate that to them and then we get them excited. And then we are all excited about this together, learning and teaching these mediums together. I think that creates that sort of welcoming environment. And in that space we just see each other, I think, a little clearer and can really celebrate each other.

I think some of it is intentional, too. We have policies in place as an organization that allow people to participate in different ways and at different cost levels. For instance, we have our outreach programs, our community art programs that we take out into the community. So for people who can't come to us for a variety of reasons, whether that's literally just a transportation issue or something else, it's much easier for us to bring it to them. If it's a cost issue, we have lots of classes, whether you take a one-off class or enroll in a beginning class, where we have a pay-what-you-can model. And we have scholarships that we offer for anything else. There's all kinds of ways that we are really careful to include a lot of people.

So there are some intentional things that we do, but I think a lot of it is just the spirit of this organization and the people that choose to be a part of it that carries that forward.

I led with his second answer, about the spirit of the place, because it's the stronger opening. The practical details come next, and his closing line ties both parts together.


How has working next to glass, metal, wood and print changed how you approach your practice personally? I know printmaking was your background initially, so maybe not as much.

Aaron: My personal practice, oddly enough, hasn't changed that much because, as you said, I have a background in printmaking.

The biggest thing is now I have access. I've been very excited about getting back into printmaking, and I've been working with our studio manager, [NAME], to start some experimentation and really get into the process and narrow down our approach to how we do things. So that's been really wonderful. In terms of my practice, not making the work but what I'm exploring and experimenting with, it's allowed me an avenue to get back into something that I've been very passionate about but wasn't able to do because of the difficulty in gaining access to it.

Likewise, when I was in school, I had access to wood shops, metal and even glass if I had so desired, though I wasn't able to take glass. I wasn't able to engage in all of them the way that I would have, because I was also focused on getting a degree. So I would use them when I could and incorporate the different materials and elements.

But often it was just that I was able to make frames for my own two-dimensional work in the wood shop. So my exploration of woodwork began as a very pragmatic, practical thing that served the larger goal that I had. But now, because I have access and because I'm working directly with experts in all these mediums, it's turned into this really wonderful collaborative process, even though we might just be working on how we're going to make the studio function really well. What projects are we teaching to the students coming in?

How do we create a structure for classes that works well with our studio and teaching these different mediums? It's become this really amazing, collaborative thing. And I feel that coming into my own artwork, but I can't yet say how that's all going to happen. Just the availability of it alone, and working with people who are extremely knowledgeable, is somewhere I really love to be.

I joke sometimes that I'm terrible at being an artist. I'm a pretty decent artist, but I'm terrible at being an artist because I love to experiment and learn new things, and I sort of get a proficiency at things, and then I don't really want to make a bunch of that work necessarily.

I want to learn more things. So I'm kind of a better student in some ways than I am an artist. So I found a happy spot here, really, where I can work with people who really know their stuff and learn a lot about it and figure out ways to apply it to the work that I want to do.

I've also never wanted to be a production potter. I've just wanted to really understand how best to make all of these things. I love the forms and I love making them. And at some point I'm like, great. Now I don't want to make that anymore. I want to learn how to use a new clay.

I want to learn how traditional Korean potters throw compared to Japanese potters. What are amazing Western traditions that I don't know about? These things are where I really love to be as an artist.

You're a nerd.

Aaron: I'm a nerd. Straight-up nerd.


Is there anything an instructor or even a student has taught you that changed something you do?

Aaron: All the time. That's the incredible thing about really paying attention to art making and makers.

My first pottery class was in 1998, so that's 28 years. The studio managers and I do what we call field trips. We meet every week, but every other week or so, we take a field trip, and one of the studio managers leads us in an activity.

Sometimes it's to practice classes that we're developing. Sometimes it's things that we need to build for the studios. But either way, we're learning things from each other all the time. And sometimes you just get struck. John Minkler, our clay studio manager, was teaching us how to hand-build creamers. Every artist's process is uniquely theirs, even though it derives from these long traditions.

And so 28 years in, John just did this thing where I was like, oh my gosh, that's how you do that. That's how you do it well, because John's a master. Seeing him do the simplest of things in a new way changed my understanding of how to do this one thing. And it was the same for another one of our studio managers. She was just like, oh my gosh, of course, that makes so much sense.

So it's hard to pin down, and that's the wonderful thing about working here and about our structure, where you can take classes from all these different instructors. Everybody does something that they've learned that works really well for them. If you pay attention to even the most basic demonstrations, guaranteed, you're going to learn something in a new way that will change the way you make.

Is there anything an instructor or even a student has taught you that changed something you do?

Aaron: All the time. That's the incredible thing about really paying attention to art making and makers.

My first pottery class was in 1998, so that's 28 years. The studio managers and I do what we call field trips. We meet every week, but every other week or so, we take a field trip, and one of the studio managers leads us in an activity.

Sometimes it's to practice classes that we're developing. Sometimes it's things that we need to build for the studios. But either way, we're learning things from each other all the time. And sometimes you just get struck. John Minkler, our clay studio manager, was teaching us how to hand-build creamers. Every artist's process is uniquely theirs, even though it derives from these long traditions.

And so 28 years in, John just did this thing where I was like, oh my gosh, that's how you do that. That's how you do it well, because John's a master. Seeing him do the simplest of things in a new way changed my understanding of how to do this one thing. And it was the same for another one of our studio managers. She was just like, oh my gosh, of course, that makes so much sense.

So it's hard to pin down, and that's the wonderful thing about working here and about our structure, where you can take classes from all these different instructors. Everybody does something that they've learned that works really well for them. If you pay attention to even the most basic demonstrations, guaranteed, you're going to learn something in a new way that will change the way you make.


Our mission is “to cultivate the artist in each of us…”, broadly speaking. What does that phrase mean to you, and how have you seen it come to fruition, especially in people who never thought of themselves as artists?

Aaron: I think it really resonates with me partly because of the background I shared earlier. Art was so central to who I was, but it needed to be seen and recognized and nurtured a bit.

I think where it really comes true is when people take a class on a whim. Say they get invited to a date night by whoever brought them in. It wasn't something they were looking for necessarily, but they just found this connection to making something.

And it changes how they feel in that moment. And then they think about it afterward, and then they are able to come back and again engage with it at any level that feels good to them. And we're here to support that at every stage. People can come and take a class and it can be a one-off thing.

And that's great because they've had that experience. They can incorporate it into their lives in any way that makes sense to them. Or they can let it go, and that's fine. We're here for that person as much as we're here for the person who shows up with a group of friends, and everybody else never takes a class again, but for some reason it stuck with them.

So they come back again and they come back again, and they come back again. And it's not that we're turning those people into artists. If we look at the language of cultivating an artist, and pardon the metaphor, we provide this sort of fertile soil for any amount of interest that they want to put into it.

And we're able to engage with them on that level because so many of our instructors started that way too. From youth to adults of any age, we're here to engage with people at whatever level of interest they have and whatever level of support they need.

It gives people, as I said before, this space to fail and not be judged. Instead, you get this level of understanding where we're just like, yeah, I remember exactly how that feels. I remember going through this process. Don't worry. If you want to continue, it's all better from here. This is part of the process.

I have had this conversation over and over again with people where they're like, I'm so frustrated. I feel like everything I'm doing is failing. And there's this beautiful thing in that moment where your perception of your failure is an acknowledgment, I think, even subconsciously, that you understand there's a better way to make these things, or there's a level of improvement that you need to get to.

So that frustration is a beautiful thing because it's you understanding that you're at the cusp of this new level of skill. And so I try and turn that around with people: this is great. When you make this next step, it's going to change everything about how you make. So embrace the frustration, work through it and live it a little bit, and you'll see what comes out of it.

So I think that we really do embody that mission every time we teach. Some of that comes out of the structure we have for teaching as a community studio, and some of it just comes from the fact that we're all working through these things too.


What are you most excited about for Groundworks' next chapter, and what do you hope people take with them after spending time in the studios?

Aaron: We're in a big moment of change still. We've created all these spaces and I'm excited to fill them and have a bustling studio where we have people moving between mediums and collaborating and creating really extraordinary programs and extraordinary artwork. That's the thing that I'm most excited about. We've created this amazing space and we're really finding out how to get as many people engaged in it as possible.

So there's lots more to come. I feel that as an organization we are also really expanding outward from teaching these classes in house and being a resource in that way to bringing programs out to populations that have trouble getting into our studio. That is such a huge part of our growth right now. When we have everything in place and we're able to really lean into how much demand there is for that, it's just going to change so many people's lives. I'm just so excited about that.

Those two things, really: the growth internally, getting people in house and getting things bustling and busy so that there's this energy that grows and grows. Super excited about that. And then taking that energy and moving it out into the community is so amazing.

As far as what people take out of the studio, honestly, I think that if anyone has had that experience where they get to make something with their own two hands and tools that they use themselves, and they can use it in their lives, or put it up on a wall and appreciate it, or give it to somebody, even if it's just that one class, I think that's enough, and I think it changes their lives.

I think it changes their appreciation for it. It changes their understanding of how critical it might be for others, if not for themselves. And I hope it changes how they look at artists in the world and how important it is for everyone to have an experience like that.