I make stuff.

I would like that to be the end of this page. That seems like as much as anyone would want, or need, to know. And writing about myself is a drag. But I guess if you are going to take the trouble to click on an About page, you should get to see at least a shard of some small story. So…

Schwartz Crafted LLC

Schwartz Crafted is a small business providing in-person pottery experiences and finely crafted pottery and ceramic art by Brandon Schwartz. It is located in the midst of Goshen, Bristol, and Elkhart in northern Indiana.

(I will now switch back to a 1st person voice because modern art is apparently about doing crazy things.)

Schwartz Crafted is the culmination of years of building, exploring, and dreaming and I hope it can be part of the local creative community for years to come. I aim to make it a place where people can learn and find inspiration as they explore clay and other creative processes.

In technical terms, Schwartz Crafted is a new business as of 2025. But it comes on the foundation of my original art-as-business attempt called Art by Fuzzy. The concept of this business started coming together back in my college days but didn’t become IRS official until about 2015. Through that time period I narrowed my focus to making functional pottery, built a couple different versions of a home studio and sold my work at local establishments and a number of local festivals and craft shows.

Now, Schwartz Crafted is a continuation of Art by Fuzzy to promote and sell my own work but also offer the opportunity to teach others about pottery.

Brandon “Fuzzy” Schwartz

Growing Up

Sometimes I start to feel a little guilty because I’ve been so blessed. You hear a lot of stories about successful people overcoming great adversity. And some of the fragments I hear about some of the kids at school would break your heart. I may have lived a fairy tale in comparison.

I was born and raised in southern Michigan. Swimming in the summers and sledding in the winters. I was the older of two boys. My dad worked at a trucking company and my mom raised the kids then worked a few different jobs including school librarian and teaching classes at a local craft store.

The Places that Made Me

Our house sat at the front of a few acres of land. The backyard was a hill that fell 20 or 30 yards down to a wooded swamp area. With a lack of portable screens and 24/7 entertainment, my brother and I, and often a handful of friends, spent a lot of time outside. Sledding and skating when it was cold, building forts, digging giant holes, and playing sports when it was warm. Man, it seems like we had so much time. I wonder if kids feel like that today.

I don’t remember wishing I had more creative supplies as a kid. Half of our basement was filled with my mom’s tools and supplies. Through the years this included oil paints, stained glass, reeds for baskets, and enough fabric and thread to outfit a small army. My dad had his own creative space in a pole barn, a 10 second walk from the house. “The Barn” was filled with about every size and kind of wood and all the saws you would ever need to cut it with.

I wish I had kept track of how many projects were completed in these spaces. The memories aren’t as clear now but both parents spent a lot of time creating. And not just an activity to fill time. They were making well crafted, useful, and beautiful things. Looking back, I can see why I find value in creating. And the encouragement and support from my parents and other family members kept me on my own creative track.

Art and Pottery

I loved to draw and make stuff as far back as I can remember. I had sketchpads full of my sports heroes and scenery. I took an interest in computers and spent hours creating low-res black and white images (pixel by pixel!) in something like Print Shop Deluxe. It wasn’t until high school until I got a real chance to work with kiln fired clay. Even then, we only made a few hand built projects.

In college, after I finally chose Art Ed as my major and took some of the intro classes, I signed up for my first ceramics class. It was located in an old house on campus that they had turned into the “Art Annex.” This is where I learned the basics of throwing pots on the pottery wheel. And I loved it. I caught on quickly and loved the idea of making things that someone could actually use. I got to experience everything from mixing clay to firing a gas kiln. I faintly remember a student art sale in the campus gallery where I sold a small blue vase for $8.

Since I enjoyed making pots so much, I asked for and received a pottery wheel for Christmas one year. I set up a little studio in “The Barn” to throw during breaks from school and did a little experimenting with pit firing. I even made a little running water contraption out of buckets and a fountain pump. Before graduating in 2004, I completed two senior projects. One was a series of 4 still life paintings. The other was a complete 8 piece dinnerware set. Some of those plain blue pieces are still around today.

About three years after we graduated, which was three years of focus on painting and photography, my wife and I bought ourselves a house. I immediately began setting up a pottery studio in the basement. Not long after that I bought a kiln to put in the garage. Eventually I outgrew half the basement and we began work on the pottery studio that you can visit today.

The Pottery Studio

The Schwartz Crafted studio is located behind our home. It takes about 10 strides to get from the garage door to the studio door. It began as a dream many years ago and it still feels like a dream sometimes even now.

After spending a couple years planning, learning, meeting with the Board of Zoning Appeals, getting permits and estimates, and recruiting my dad to be the general contractor and assemble the best teams, we broke ground on June 4th, 2018. By July we had dump truck loads of dirt brought in and leveled off. We had an Amish crew put up the main structure. They had it finished in a few days of work. My dad and I installed tubes for in-floor heating before the concrete was put down. Through the fall and winter my dad, brother, and grandpa came down multiple times to put up walls, run electric and install insulation. By June 2019 I was painting walls. During the next 12 months we cut and installed trim, I bought and built shelves, counters, and storage racks and gradually started moving in. By the end of 2020 the studio was fully operational. Since then, I’ve accumulated a lot of junk, built more storage space, moved things around, installed walkways and a retaining wall, and purchased a few extra pottery wheels.

Now, the studio is set up to handle 5 or 6 people at a time. Or about 10 people for a book club. Most things are on wheels which makes the space flexible and easy to change. There are still a few improvements to make but it is hard to believe how far we have already come.