Los Alamos Community Ceramics opens new Trinity Drive studio, plans open house

Los Alamos Community Ceramics has left its longtime home at Fuller Lodge and opened a new studio at 2101 Trinity Drive, Suite Q1, a move that gives the group its own space as it works to expand classes, memberships and creative programming.

The studio will host an open house May 13 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., when visitors can tour the new location, meet members and learn more about classes, workshops and memberships. The organization says it now has more than 100 lifetime members and averages about 40 monthly open-studio members, a base that suggests the move is not a contraction but a step toward growth.

That growth has been building for years. Los Alamos Community Ceramics says it has served the community since 2015 as a member-run nonprofit offering open-studio access for independent ceramic artists, along with classes and workshops for beginners and advanced ceramicists. The Fuller Lodge Art Center Clay Club began that same year as a partnership with the then Fuller Lodge Art Center under Ken Nebel, and it grew out of the work of local artists Gloria Gilmore-House and Alison Ticknor.

The group’s new identity reflects a larger institutional shift. Clay Club became a 501(c)(7) nonprofit social club in 2024 while working toward 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit status, a transition that aligns with its broader teaching mission. Lindsey Gurganus, the organization’s president, said, “I moved here in 2018 and the first thing I did was join this studio for socialization.”

That social side remains central. The studio brings together hand builders, wheel throwers, slip casters and Raku artists, with members ranging in age from 10 to more than 60. In a town where newcomers often look for ways to meet people and feel rooted, the ceramics studio has functioned as an intergenerational gathering place as much as an arts program.

The move also changes the organization’s relationship to one of Los Alamos’ most storied buildings. Fuller Lodge, built in 1928 and designed by John Gaw Meem, once served the Los Alamos Ranch School and later Manhattan Project workers before becoming a community venue in the county’s historic district. Los Alamos County now owns the building, and the Fuller Lodge Art Center was temporarily closed in 2023 because of funding challenges, even as classroom programs continued.

For Los Alamos Community Ceramics, the Trinity Drive studio marks a practical and symbolic shift: out of a shared historic space and into a dedicated home that can better support a growing arts community.