Evolving a Vision
The space sits on the former property of ceramic artist Don Reitz in northern Arizona, land that carries a long history of experimentation, salt firing, wood firing, and shared making.
The goal is to steward the land with care and build upon Don’s vision of creating a ceramics studio and a space for artists. The space honors the history of Reitz Ranch while staying focused on what's ahead: a working clay community in Arizona that's grounded in ceramics, honest about how it operates, and genuinely committed to the artists who are part of it.
Before Arizona Clay Space,
There Was Don Reitz.
Don Reitz (1929–2014) made a lasting mark on American ceramics as a thrower, educator, and relentless experimenter.
He spent more than 25 years teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earned his MFA at Alfred University in 1962, and built a body of work that ended up in over 50 public and private collections. In 1981, Ceramics Monthly readers named him one of the twelve greatest living potters in the world. He was also, by all accounts, a genuinely warm and generous person. The kind of teacher people remember for the right reasons.
His contribution to salt-glazing alone would have been enough. At a time when the technique had fallen out of fashion, Reitz picked it up and made it his own. He understood that salt-glazing let the clay stay itself, that it kept the maker's hand in the work rather than hiding it. His peers eventually just called him ‘Mr. Salt’. In his later years he lived and worked in Clarkdale, Arizona, on the property that Arizona Clay Space now stewards. He once said he would have been a poet if not for dyslexia, and that clay was where he found his voice instead. You can feel that in the work.
Reitz never stopped pushing at what ceramics could be, and the land here still carries that spirit.
