(Image courtesy of Anderson Ranch Arts Center.)

In this workshop, students will develop their unique voice using the material vocabulary of form, function, color and surface to evoke emotion, deliver poetic metaphor, make connections to cultural histories, and resonate sentiment.  Utilitarian ceramic objects are landmarks of the physical, emotional, and relational topographies we use to navigate our lived stories around food, self, and each other.  As thoughtful makers, we consider the larger purposes served by our work, incorporating layers of meaning associated with studio process, aesthetic qualities, and functionality into our shaping of gestures and lives.  We are not just making bowls to hold soup – we are building receptive space into experience, to find moments of compassion and generosity in a handheld vessel.

We will refine our forms and surfaces as we generate dialogue, drawings, and writing to clarify the thoughts, inspirations, emotions, and wisdom that we embody in our artwork.  While exploring forming methods such as pinching, coiling, throwing and altering, solid prototyping, press molding, and reductive shaping, participants will work to align their aesthetic goals with the materials, processes, and presentations of their artwork.  Special attention will be given to the development of color and surface qualities through creative glaze chemistry experiments that are grounded in scientific methodology but driven by our artistic intuition.  At the end of the workshop, we will emerge with a new sense of purpose as makers within contemporary culture, building prototypes for a new world.

NCECA members receive 20% off summer workshops at Anderson Ranch!