From the Archives: Voices from the Past
Clay Art Center collections include archival materials the provide glimpses into the history of our community.
As Clay Art Center approaches its 70th anniversary, we are diving into the long history of people and programs that have made this place so special. That process has included exploring our archives, made up of the letters, brochures, photographs, ticket stubs, notes, manuscripts, and all other manner of documentation that give us necessary context to understand Clay Art Center’s past. Many of these records are straightforward to access: we can read the letters (even if it takes a minute to decipher the handwriting), and the photographs depict the evolution of the studios and the artists who have worked in them. Occasionally, we encounter materials that are harder to “read”. When technology evolves, old tech can become obsolete, sometimes to the detriment of historical records that were made using that technology. For example, every computer used to have a disc drive that could read CDs, but if you needed to access information stored on one today, when many computers are fitted exclusively with USB and USB-C connectors, how would you get to that information?
When we found a VHS tape labelled “Clay Art Center 1-18-87 Reunion” and an audio cassette tape simply labelled “Henry’s Message”, we reached out to a local audiovisual digitization firm to digitize the materials. We didn’t know what to expect, especially from the cassette tape - what could Henry’s message possibly be? - but we knew that these pieces of Clay Art Center history needed to be preserved. The digitization firm has the equipment to play the audiovisual materials while also creating high-fidelity recordings of the original content to preserve the record in a modern file format that can be saved on a thumb drive or cloud-based server. Both the VHS tape and the cassette tape were successfully digitized, after a repair to the body of the cassette, and the original tapes and the digitized recordings are now safe in the Clay Art Center archival collection. Below, you can hear “Henry’s Message”, which turned out to be the voicemail message that Henry recorded for Clay Art Center, and watch a clip from the reunion video.
Clay Art Center Reunion, 1987
For those of us at Clay Art Center who did not know Henry during his lifetime, but have heard so many legendary stories about him, the opportunity to hear his voice and see his gestures is incredible, like finally putting a face to a longtime pen pal. As we continue to work with the archival collections, we will uncover more stories and resources like these, and preserve them for the next generation of Clay Art Center.