After 7 years, Clay Arts Vegas exits the Arts District

When Clay Arts Vegas opened on Main Street in 2012, the stretch of the Arts District that spanned from Charleston Boulevard to Wyoming Avenue was desolate.

“That was before Velveteen Rabbit, before the vintage stores were in there,” co-owner Thomas Bumblauskas remembers. “It was just us, the bar at Arts Factory and a Volkswagen restoration place.”

Clay Arts became one of the first art businesses in the Arts District and an early participant at the monthly First Friday event. Last week, they closed shop, left the Main Street and moved three miles west.

The school, retail center and gallery opened after the recession, which had led to several studios in town shutting down.

Ceramics scene collapsing

“The city was closing all the pottery studios in the community centers due to budget cuts. And other studios in town were having financial issues,” Bumblauskas says. “So then everybody went to (College of Southern Nevada). Then they made it so you could only take classes if you were signed up as an art major.”

Bumblauskas was a teacher at the time and observed how the entire ceramics scene was falling apart.

He and six other artists, students and teachers decided that they could figure out how to open their own studio.

“Part of moving to Main Street was we were centrally located,” he says. “We became the hub.”

For seven years, Clay Arts offered wheel-throwing and hand-building lessons, open studio time, gallery space, a retail shop that provides materials to some local schools, drop-in classes for beginners and date nights.

“We’ll even do the ‘Ghost’ photo if you really want it,” Bumblauskas says, laughing.

The studio also makes dishware for restaurants Esther’s Kitchen and Ada’s, and creates novelty barware for bars and breweries in other U.S. cities. Visiting artists will regularly stop in to teach guest classes.

Bumblauskas and co-owner Peter Jokubowski began scouting for a new location in February, seeking a larger footprint, more parking and a neighborhood that felt safer for the studio’s members.

“When I have clients panhandled in the parking lot I pay rent at, it makes it difficult,” he says.

And that rent increased this year, he says, with a change in ownership of their former building.

“If I want to keep charging $160 for the eight-week class, in the Arts District, I would need three times as many students,” Bumblauskas says.

New place offers more

The new Clay Arts location, 1353 Arville St., offers everything the Main Street building didn’t: large windows, ample parking and twice the square footage for students — and Marcus, the resident wire-haired Jack Russell terrier — to make themselves at home.

“People are just bubbly about the move,” Bumblauskas says. “It’s really good.”

Contact Janna Karel at jkarel@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jannainprogress on Twitter.