Sam Weinfield: Shaping Motion in Clay

The Bachelor of Arts (BA) Senior Studio is offered each year to Stamps BA students in their final year of study. In the class, students and instructors combine individual studio work with a collaborative project: the production of a fully self-directed show from start to finish, emphasizing the skills and practices associated with producing professional exhibitions. This year, students under the direction of Professor Nick Tobier and GSI Michaela Nichelle also invested time in getting to know one another, conducting a series of peer-to-peer interviews to learn more about the process, inspirations, and practice of their classmates. Over the next few months, we’re reprinting some of these interviews, which were combined into a collection featuring studio portraits by Urvi Joshi (BA ​’25) and a cover by Riley Huhta (BA ​’26).

Sam Weinfield

Interviewed by Urvi Joshi

Joshi: I am curious how you became a ceramicist. I know you work in areas that seem very two-dimensional or technical, like computer science, so why pottery? How did you end up here, working on this kind of project?

Weinfield: It surprises people, but I only started computer science in my senior year of high school. Before that, pottery was really the core of my creative life. My dad is a sculptor, so art was part of my environment from the very beginning. When I was six, I got one of those plastic pottery wheels meant for kids, and I kept using it obsessively. In middle school I became much more serious. I did not have a real wheel, and I could not join a guild at that age, but I still pushed myself. I made my first teapot at ten because my teacher would not teach me how to make one, so I figured it out myself. That became a pattern. If I wanted to make something, I simply tried until it worked.

That determination seems very present in your work now too, especially when something goes wrong with the piece or the kiln. Has your process changed since middle school? Or have you always been someone who commits to a vision and pushes forward?

The funny thing is, I am not sure I will ever remain committed to the original vision. I start with a sketch because it gives me a sense of direction, but the final piece almost never matches what I draw. Once I start building, I respond to what the clay is doing. If a form appears that feels right, even if it is not in the plan, I follow it. Usually, the original idea disappears pretty early in the process. I think of the drawing as a loose suggestion rather than something I have to follow.

Did that happen with the piece you are working on now?

Yes, absolutely. My original concept involved many more components, and they were intended to be flat discs. But the first segment came out more oval than shallow and wide. I realized immediately that my plan would not give me the scale I wanted and that the construction method would be too difficult to implement. So I changed direction. That is normal for me. The final piece grows out of what is actually happening in the studio, not what I imagined beforehand.

I sense you have a strong relationship with the wheel. Why do you prefer wheel throwing so much?

I really do not enjoy hand-building. It limits what I can express, because there are forms that are easier to create by hand, but the wheel feels most natural to me. It is the tool I trust. It is also the tool that gives me the kind of flow I like, the sense that the piece is emerging through motion.

You mentioned expression. Do you think of pottery as a form of expression? What motivates you when you begin a new piece?

There is always an intention, but for me, it is usually tied to improvement. I want each piece to be better than the one before it. The piece I am working on now is meant to be an improved version of something I made over the summer. So yes, it is expression, but I think it is expression through refinement, through trying to understand how to do something better than I did before.

What inspires the visual direction of your work?

Often, something I have seen in the real world, but interpreted loosely. This particular piece ended up being inspired by mountain cairns, even though that was not the original idea. As the piece grew, the form began to echo those stacked stones, so I leaned into it.

What was the original idea?

Honestly, just to make something cool. I believe art has to have that immediate visual appeal. A piece should make you feel something on sight, before you know any meaning behind it. My decisions tend to be driven by how the piece looks and feels rather than how accurately it matches any reference.

What kinds of aesthetics pull you in? I notice you often work with height and rounded forms.

Over the years, I have pushed myself to make taller and more physically ambitious pieces. Height is one of the hardest things to achieve on a wheel. Large pieces require multi-part construction, and they take a lot of strength and concentration. I love flowing curves and shapes that feel continuous. The wheel naturally supports that kind of movement. I also enjoy physical labor in pottery. I like that the effort it takes to shape something large shows in the final form. It becomes a record of the work that went into it.

It really does seem like the forms reflect both nature and the labor of the artist. The curves feel intuitive, but the height creates this sense of tension and impossibility, which is a really exciting balance.

That is a good interpretation. I like that reading of it.

As your style has developed, which artists have influenced you? Has that changed over time?

George Ohr was the first artist who really made me fall in love with pottery, even though our work looks nothing alike. My favorite artist overall is Dale Chihuly. He is a glassblower who makes these wildly fluid forms. Again, my pieces do not resemble his directly, but I take inspiration from the sense of motion in his work. Beyond that, I think much of my inspiration comes from myself. Since I focus so much on improving on the previous piece, the main question I ask at the start of a new one is how do I make this better than what I made last time.

Path Forward, the 2025 Stamps BA Senior Studio Exhibition, was on view at Stamps Gallery from December 3 – 13, 2025. The exhibition worked to weave meditations on nature, the inner and outer workings of our human bodies from the functional to the phenomenal, the paces of daily lives whether reading or rushing, in friendship or in family and exploring memories of real and imagined pasts as they intersect with the here and now. Featuring work in experimental video, fashion, painting, illustration and sculpture, Path Forward postulates stepping stones for near and possible futures.