We remember and honor Mary E. Nyburg, a nationally respected potter, crafts advocate, teacher, and one-time Baltimore Clayworks Resident Artist, whose love for the crafts grew in Baltimore. Mary would have been 103 years old on July 10, but the Maine native died in April 2006. In her honor, friends and family of Mary began The Mary E. Nyburg Fund for Artist Development in 2007—an endowment fund that annually awards a stipend to support and further an artist’s work and career in clay.
This year’s recipient of The Mary E. Nyburg Fund for Artist Development is Wayman Scott, a mental health clinician and diversity and inclusion specialist, who specializes in portrait sculpture and recently created carved reliefs of Bob Marley and St. Cecilia along with life-sized busts of Fredrick Douglas and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The Towson University Political Science and Government graduate hopes to use his $1,500 award money to sponsor a ceramics project at an East Baltimore City School, where he would help “displaced children in the neighborhood build something that is permanent and part of their healing journey.”