Wichita State’s Ceramic Guild held their annual holiday pottery sale on Wednesday and Thursday at Henrion Hall. 

The pieces on sale were handmade by students and faculty members.

Associate professor of ceramic media Ted Adler helped organize the event. He says that 50 percent of the profit goes to the artists and the other half goes to the ceramic guild. 

“The guild pays for visiting artists, students travel to conferences, and sometimes equipment the school can’t buy,” Adler said. “It’s a way for students to help other students through direct funding for travel or indirectly for equipment.”

Adler says the holiday sale is usually held a week after Thanksgiving, but due to COVID-19 and the altered fall schedule the sale was moved earlier into the semester. COVID-19 also changed the sale’s location to Henrion Hall instead of McKnight. Although there have been many changes, Adler says that the pandemic has also brought some good. 

“[COVID-19] has actually made us up our social media game a little bit. We’ve had to be a little bit better about being more proactive to reach out to people that dont know [the sale is] happening and I feel like I’m actually seeing some new faces,” Adler said. “…In the same way COVID has made people more thoughtful, I think we’ve gotten a little more thoughtful about how we connect with our supporters in the community.”

WSU alumni Katherine Smalley returned to campus to participate in this year’s sale. 

“They had some renovations that I wanted to come back and experience that I didn’t get to experience since last year ended abruptly,” Smalley said. 

This is her sixth WSU ceramic sale she has participated in. She says she has been doing ceramics for about six or seven years now and although the process can frustrate her at times she still “loves it dearly”.

“It makes me want to pull my hair out half the time to be honest,” Smalley said. “…That’s part of the process…You just spend so much [time] doing one little thing and it comes out and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s okay.”

Adler says he hopes for buyers to be able to gift loved ones with something unique this year. 

“I think the biggest thing about the sale is that hopefully we are helping to supply our campus community and our friends outside of the campus community with gifts to give that are made by people that they may know or interact with,” Adler said.