I hate to be giving this place one star, but here we are.
I had very high hopes for SEED. I thought it would be the ceramics studio that Sacramento desperately needs. It is not.
Though it is a POC-owned business that claims it's a safe space for makers in the community, SEED is a very unsafe space for anyone, POC or not. It's a damn shame, and it's all due to the owner, Sioux, AKA management.
Management is moodier than a teenaged child. When you walk through the doors of SEED, you never know if you're going to get someone who hates your guts or your bestest art friend. I paid too much money to SEED for five months and I'm not sure if Sioux liked me or not. Leaning towards not, and definitely not after this review, but who knows if he'll even read it? In his own words, people "leave bad reviews about me all the time". That's not a badge of honor, dude. That's a sign that maybe you've got to do some work on yourself.
Because of that, I hated going in when he was there. It just felt like walking on eggshells. So I never went in when he was there, and he is always there, so eventually, I stopped going in, paying $215 (is it still 215? Or is it more now because he decided to raise prices without communicating to existing members) for maybe one or two visits to the studio per month, usually at night or on the weekends because he wouldn't be there. When he was absent from the studio due to covid or NCECA, a ceramics conference, it was great! It was chill. It was relaxing.
My wariness can also be attributed to the fact that my first week at the studio, the two other cofounders left. Like they just packed their shit and left without saying a word. They cited verbal abuse from the owner. Throughout my time at SEED, I watched as more folks left saying similar things.
When I asked Sioux about what's going to happen to the studio, he was confident about staying open. One could say he was even too confident, bragging about how he's the best person ever, better than everyone else, he's an artist and a studio owner and someone with a long history of working in the food industry and therefore understands the intricacies of being a ceramics instructor and customer service.
Sioux primarily relies on instructing new students so he can rope them into a signing up for a membership to keep the studio going. From the few times I was in the studio, he's just as condescending to students when he's instructing. Come on, man, people are here because they want to learn, not because they want to get talked down to.
At SEED, students come before everyone else. The hierarchy is students, members, residents, and work-trade. If you are work-trade, expect to get the shit end of the stick and passive-aggressiveness, especially if you don't do things exactly the way God intended. If you're a student, everything is laid out for you on the website. If you want to be a member or a resident or work-trade, you've got to email or come in to talk to Sioux. Good luck with emailing, sometimes it takes a while to get a response. And good luck with going in, too.
SEED operates on the owner's whims. Policies are changed, prices are updated with little to no transparency. When a policy is updated, I noticed Sioux would try to talk to members individually, but that's kind of hard to do when people are avoiding coming into the studio because of him. There's no structure for communication in place. No email lists for communicating upcoming changes. There's a Slack channel, but it's crickets in there. Firing schedules were created, and then thrown to the wind if Sioux had a commission. I understand it's Sioux's own business, but when you're catering to others, maybe actually employ your super wonderful and amazing customer service skills that you couldn't stop bragging about.
All of the folks (except one) I've talked to at SEED share a similar sentiment about the owner making the studio an unsafe space and feeling uncomfortable and wanting to leave. Do yourself a favor and skip this place. It'll save you a lot of stress of eventually walking on eggshells and being talked down on. Truly.
SEED is not a safe space for anyone remotely interested in clay. Save yourself the time because like everyone else, you'll probably be leaving eventually. read more