Peterborough artist Lulu Fichter chosen for 2024 Smithsonian Craft Fair

Of the 120 American artists and crafters invited to the 2024 Smithsonian Craft Fair, Lulu Fichter of Peterborough might be the only one who will have to dig her work out of the ice before she can pack it up to take to Washington, D.C.

For the past nine years, Fichter has been immersing her fired ceramic forms in the Nubanusit River, retrieving the pieces months later to see the effect of the water on her work.

“The fair is not until May, so my husband and I have time for the ice to melt and to find all my pots again,” Fichter said. “We usually do this in the summer.”

The fair, designed to showcase “America’s best craft and design artists,”  runs from May 1 to 5, 2024, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The show is a fundraiser for the Smithsonian Museum. 

“I guess the fifth time is the charm,” Fichter said. “I’ve applied to the Smithsonian Craft Fair four times in the past. My husband and my friends are my biggest supporters, and they just kept encouraging me to apply. I really couldn’t even take it in when they notified me. I always had it in the back of my head that maybe, someday, it would be an amazing thing to have happen, but I never really thought, ‘Oh, my work is definitely at this level.’ I was really amazed.”

Fichter had not been planning to apply again for 2024, but this summer at the annual League of N.H. Craftsmen Fair at Mount Sunapee, a representative from the Smithsonian handed her a card, inviting her to apply.

“She said she was only handing out six cards that day, so I don’t know if that was what made a difference, or because this year, I entered all my river pieces,” Fichter said.

Fichter, who has been a ceramicist for 30 years and worked with clay since she was 9, has lived in Peterborough since 1988. Her work, inspired by the shapes and forms of sea creatures, evokes coral, barnacles, spiny urchins, sand dollars and fanciful constructions. She credits her husband, Robert “Woody” Woods, with enabling her to do ceramics full-time.

“He gives up a lot so I can do this,” she said. “He’s just absolutely the best.” 

In the summer months, Fichter can keep an eye on her  creations as they sit, partially submerged, in the sand patches at the bottom of the Nubanusit at the edge of her back yard. 

“The first time, we put them down there in the sand and left them for a month, just to see what would happen. Then we went out and dug them up, and they had this incredible finish. It’s graded from light to dark, with different layers from different minerals, depending what’s in the river,” Fichter explained. 

Fichter has never heard of another artist who immerses ceramics in a river.

“I heard about a guy in England who puts his work in the ocean, but his work is really huge pieces, and he has to raise and lower them with chains to get them out. He leaves them in there long enough that barnacles and other creatures actually start living on them, so then when he pulls the work out, they die. That just seems icky,” Fichter said. 

The first time Fichter set one of her bowl-like “pods” in the river, a crayfish darted in and made itself at home. But other than the occasional caddisfly attaching itself to the wall of a pod, Fichter’s ceramics do not disturb the habitat of the river. 

Fichter was astonished when she pulled out this summer’s batch of ceramics, as they had turned much darker than in previous years.

“I couldn’t believe it! I thought because there was so much rain, the color would be lighter and more diluted. But I guess more water or the speed of the water, they were tinted it a completely different shade,” Fichter said. “They have to be in there at least a month. Biologically, that”s when things start to happen in the river. “

One of Fichter’s darker pods from the rainy summer of 2023 won Best of Decorative Ceramics at the Sunapee fair this year. Of 183 pieces of work that Fichter immersed in the river this year, 171 survived. 

“That’s just part of the deal. Either we can’t find them because they’re covered with sand, or maybe some of them get carried away or broken. I always wanted to be an archaeologist, so I love to think that maybe someday, someone will find some of my work in the river,” Fichter said with a smile.

Now that she’s working with an April deadline to get her creations out of the water, Fichter is looking into finding a wetsuit. 

“We’ll see how they come out. This is our first time leaving them under the ice, I have no idea how we’re going to get them out, ” Fichter said. “The river doesn’t freeze all the way down, but it can get a serious crust on it. We’ll just have to figure it out.”

Fichter is on Facebook,  as a member of the League of N.H. Craftsmen, and on the Monadnock Art Tour.