Science on Screen®: Touched by the Magic of Clay

Monday, April 21st – An April Vacation Family Friendly Event

The Gem received a 2025 Science on Screen Grant and we are partnering with BAAM to bring you five S.T.E.A.M. events centered around the senses: Taste, Smell, Sound, Sight, and Touch.

In our third event in the series, we focus on the sense of touch, exploring how our relation with clay utilizes it. There is a strong connection between clay and touch – remember being a child and how mud called out to be played with or a puddle to be jumped in? Touch is the primary sense employed when a potter works. Making pots, with its focus on tactile exploration and the shaping of clay, offers a unique sensory experience that can be both therapeutic and meditative, promoting a sense of grounding and connection. 

We will begin our exploration of the clay/touch connection with a social hour where kids and adults can get their hands dirty in clay and try their hand at sculpting with this seductive material. Then, Martha Grover, local potter, clay teacher and internationally known artist, will share her thoughts on touch and clay, while demonstrating throwing on the potters wheel. We will follow that with a screening of Chicken Run, a fun claymation movie.

Martha Grover is a functional potter, living in Bethel Maine, creating thrown and altered porcelain pieces. She attended Bennington College in Vermont, where she received her undergraduate degree in Architecture. Martha received her MFA in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has been awarded multiple residencies and fellowships including the Fogelberg Fellowship at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Sage Scholarship and Taunt Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation , and a yearlong residency at Red Lodge Clay Center.  Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, and can be found at galleries across the country. Her work has been featured in many publications including Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, Pottery Making Illustrated, the Lark 500 series, and was the cover feature of Ceramic Monthly’s May 2010 issue. 

Following Martha’s presentation, we will show the highly entertaining stop motion claymation film Chicken Run! From Directors Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit) and Peter Lord comes the award-winning DreamWorks animation from the Aardman team telling the story of a band of chickens doomed to a life of egg-laying on a Yorkshire chicken farm. When a flamboyant American rooster arrives on the scene, the hens hope he can teach them to fly to freedom. However, when a chicken-pie making machine is installed, their need becomes urgent and they must devise other means of escape.

A huge thank you to:

An initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION.

Tickets for this event are Pay What You Can. All proceeds go to helping cover the cost of the Science on Screen event and to support BAAM programming. We encourage MSAD44 students to choose the $0 ticket.