Mara Lindqvist, a ceramicist who works out of the shared studio behind the community garden on Peach Street, has completed a new body of work using clay she harvested from the foundation dig for the Meridian condos on North 19th. The development, which broke ground in March, replaced a 1920s bungalow and a vacant lot where teenagers used to park and watch the lights on the M. Lindqvist asked the contractor if she could fill a few five-gallon buckets before the pour. He said sure, just sign the waiver.

The resulting vessels — wide bowls, narrow-necked vases, a set of cups that fit the hand like they remember it — carry the grit of the valley floor. Flecks of mica catch the light. Some pieces slumped in the wood kiln, which Lindqvist tends with a rotation of MSU students and a retired geologist named Herb. She calls the series “Substrate.” The glaze recipes use ash from beetle-kill pine and a splash of iron oxide from a mine tailings pile near Three Forks.

“The clay has a memory,” Lindqvist said, wiping her hands on an apron stained with decades of other people’s projects. “It held the roots of the cottonwood that shaded the bungalow. It held the weight of the foundation. Now it holds tea.” She fired the work during the last full moon, a practice she started after a workshop with a visiting artist from Santa Fe who talked about lunar influence on crystal formation. The kiln reached 2,350 degrees. The barn wood door of the kiln shed swollen shut with humidity.

The pieces will be shown at the August First Friday at the Storefront Project, a gallery that occupies the ground floor of a building that used to be a tractor dealership. The opening coincides with the first weekend of the Sweet Pea Festival. Lindqvist plans to serve a tisane brewed from nettles she foraged near the headwaters of Hyalite Creek. She has priced the cups at forty-five dollars each. The bowls start at two hundred. She still works part-time at the Co-op deli counter on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The Meridian condos are listed from the high sixes. The bungalow’s former tenant, a nurse who commuted to Livingston, moved to Belgrade last fall.