BabyFace Studio Offers Something for Everyone
By Michele Marsilii
Photos By Susan Beard Design (susanbearddesign.com)
If you have visited the Manayunk Arts Festival, you might notice a familiar face fronting Main Street’s newest business, BabyFace Studio. Owner, Kim Canfield, creator of BabyFace Mugs, is an award-winning ceramic and figurative artist who recently opened a working pottery studio at the corner of Main and Rector Streets.
Canfield exploded onto the Manayunk Arts Festival scene as an emerging artist in 2022, placing third in that category in her first year. In 2023 and 2024 she won Best in Ceramics as a festival artist, while eyeing Main Street as the location for her next business venture.
“Some of the girls from the Manayunk Development Corporation came by with a certificate, and they said, ‘Congrats! You won this year for Best in Ceramics,’ and that recognition meant a lot to me,” said Canfield. “I really have come to get to know the neighborhood, some of the people here, and it is by far my favorite festival that I’m a part of. There was something about this community and the people when I thought about opening up a studio. This was my number one pick.”
The community has certainly embraced BabyFace Studio, with initial classes quickly selling out. Canfield credits accessibility and the desire for a new activity to round out the Manayunk experience. “They’ve been looking for something like this to do on the street. There’s a lot of great restaurants; there’s shopping, but to have an activity to do, I’m glad we have been able to bring that to the neighborhood.”
On weeknights and weekends, the studio is humming with activity as budding artists practice pottery-making skills such as wheel throwing, glazing, and hand building. Class sizes are limited to allow for more personalized instruction and community connection. Canfield instructs all classes herself and enjoys observing the interaction among students. She says 90% of participants are from the neighborhood.
“I’m just watching the conversations that are happening before I start class. I’ll sit back, and I’ll let them go for a little bit. They sit around, and they start to connect: ‘I live up on this street. I live up on the hill. I’m in Roxborough…” Canfield noted. “We’re not just sitting at the wheel working, but everyone’s talking and creating this community here.”
Pottery classes cater to all ages and abilities, including eight-week beginner, intermediate, and advanced programs. For those interested in sampling a class, there are shorter, themed weekend workshops and even a wheel-throwing Try It Out class.
In addition to her busy schedule as an artist and new business owner, Canfield is also a full-time high school art teacher. She is passionate about teaching and is excited to bring children’s programs to the neighborhood, where she recognized an underserved niche. “Those are on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I see a lot of families that walk through early in the morning when the street is still pretty quiet, and I wanted to give them an opportunity to come into a space with the kids. They can come in as a family in the morning just for an hour.”
Recognizing the limited attention span of small children, she breaks the children’s groups up into two age categories: five to seven and eight to ten. “If it’s the younger kids, they do some type of drawing and coloring activity that pairs nicely with the clay activity. The older group will actually work with real clay, while the younger group will do air dry clay just because they don’t fully understand the concept yet that they have to leave it here with me so I can fire it.”
On Valentine’s Day, BabyFace Studio debuted Date Night which has been wildly successful. Limited to just four couples, it’s a full class where students create a piece of art while also enjoying an intimate night out. “Date nights are great,” said Canfield. “My husband helps me out with it. We walk them through the first hour of making something on the wheel, and then they get to enjoy drinks (BYOB) along with appetizers supplied in-studio. We have a gallery upstairs that is lit and decorated with candles, and in the last hour, they get to paint their pieces.”
Canfield encourages students to explore the kind of work that makes them happy. She says your personal interests, your hobbies, your life is going to come through your work at some point. According to Canfield, one of the greatest thrills as an instructor is watching students discover their confidence in creating something handmade. “The greatest moments are the people who thought they couldn’t do it. I take their piece out of the kiln, glazed and finished, and they’re holding it in total shock that it’s something they’ve created with their own hands. That’s what a lot of people get really hooked on when they realize – oh, I can do this.”
Aptly named for her signature creation, Babyface Mugs, the studio displays some of Canfield’s favorite pieces, which resemble grumpy baby faces intricately sculpted by hand. The inspiration for her first grumpy face mug is as fascinating as the art itself. “I fired a lot of our gas kilns when I was an undergrad, becoming their studio technician. I was the one that was in there firing them. The thing with gas kilns is they are like giant furnaces, burning in the back of the building at over 2000°. Flames shoot out the top, the back, and the front, so they have to be babysat all day long. These firings could last from 12 to 16 hours. It’s not like an electric kiln which we have here.”
Canfield recalls loading the kiln until midnight. She would spend the night in the studio or return at 3:00 or 4:00 AM to start it up. She says it was exhausting, and she began making grumpy faces to communicate how she felt.
“I was just not a morning person, and these firings would happen very often, sometimes towards the end of a semester when it was really busy there. It could be a few times a week, or every two weeks. So I started making them, and I liked the grumpy faces. I used that as a way to communicate my feelings in the studio.”
It is no surprise then that every face created is her face. She begins with a photo taken on her phone of her own face contorted into an expression. From there, she begins the detailed work of sculpting by hand, using only one tool to refine her work.
“It starts off as a basic cup,” said Canfield, “Then once it stiffens up a little bit, I push and pull the clay, so it’s still soft enough to dig out. I push in where the eye sockets are just with my fingers; the mouth as well, and then, once I do that, I can start to hand build on top of that. It starts off on the wheel, and then it ends up being hand-built.”
Canfield describes pottery as unlike any other medium she has worked in. Her vision for the studio is to recreate that sense of community that she experienced as an undergraduate and to encourage others to find happiness in creating something with their hands. Her advice to budding potters or those curious about the medium is to “let stuff go” and abandon perfectionism.
“I really do feel that’s the best way to learn here. You have to fail in order to understand how far you can push your pieces, and it’ll make you better. If you play it safe, I don’t feel like you’re really going to reach your full potential to what you can really make. You’ve got to kind of get uncomfortable with it”.
Canfield hopes to expand programming to offer children’s camps in the summer and memberships in the spring. They are considering perhaps a second location on Main Street. Students who have taken at least one eight-week course would be eligible for membership granting them access to the studio on their own time to work independently.
If you visit BabyFace Studio, you might even catch a glimpse of Cielo, the studio pup, who has been with Canfield through every step of her career. From graduation to her first solo show, six-year-old Cielo has been by Canfield’s side, and now claims the title of the official studio pup!
Catch Canfield at the Manayunk Arts Festival on June 21st and Jun 22nd.
For more information about BabyFace Studio or to register for classes, visit https://www.babyfacestudios.com.
To view or purchase BabyFace Mugs, visit www.babyfacemugs.com.