Tuesday, October 5, 2010

SUMMER RAKU WORKSHOPS 2010

This summer I taught a series of Raku workshops twice a week for 6 weeks, along with two additional workshops this fall.  Below are some photographs taken from those workshops at Bill Campbell's Studio in Edinboro Pennsylvania.  The workshops were split into two days per group.  On day one, we made coil bowls using clay molds.  We went over the history of how puki pots were used in Pueblo Indian pottery, and how it related to the building process we were using to create our own pots in the workshop.  In between classes I fired the student work, and on day two, we glazed and fired the bowls using the Raku firing process.




I dug through an absorbant amount of gunk to find the missing piece to this lovely bowl.  The things you do for your students!




















A FIGURE MODELING CLASS I TAUGHT THIS SUMMER



Here are some photographs of student work from the figure modeling class I taught over the summer for the Cattaraugus Arts Council in Allegany NY.  For the majority of the students, this class was their first experience working with clay.  There was a live model throughout the series of classes taught.  









Although I have taught many ceramic classes, this was the first class I taught solely focused on the figure.  The experience was challenging.  It was exciting to encourage and watch students discover clay and the figure. 

Thursday, September 30, 2010

WHEN THE CROWS FLY


This is my most recent installation that was on exhibit this spring and summer, 2010.














A SHORT BRIEFING ON MYSELF . . .

In 1999 I started college at SUNY Fredonia, a NY state college.  I wanted to go to school for art.  So, trying to be logical about the inevitable job search I was to face after my four years of college, my concentration was Graphic Design.  After all, advertisements will always be used in some fashion or another.  After spending my first 3 weeks of design class tracing the letter F, I wondered what I was going to do with myself.  My freedom of creativity was suffocated through my design classes.  I felt as though I had to fit all of my artistic energy inside a nice tidy box of rules.  The design classes taught me a lot about the nature of design, the joys of working for clients, and a few other things.  In the end, I ended up liking design very much, but I didn't LOVE it.  I wanted more.  As soon as I was able, I signed into a ceramic class and made some pretty ugly desk weights.  I LOVED every moment too.  It was challenging, messy, and beautiful.  The studio at Fredonia had huge windows lining the length of the the studio, and they looked out over a field and a grouping of trees.  I would sit there and practice throwing pots on a wheel and not stop until I saw the sun rise the next day. The sunsets and rises in Fredonia were out of this world in beauty, and were one of the few things that could take my attention from my work.  I was not the best, but I was always getting better, always learning.  In the end I stayed a fifth year at Fredonia and received a BFA in ceramics along with my BA in Graphic Design.  Towards the end of my Fredonia years I knew how to throw a pretty decent pot, and the addiction to pottery was beginning to falter.  I began to draw and carve obsessively on my pots.  Then, I started to alter them and use them in different ways adding sculptures onto them, making them into sculptures, and eventually I even used them as pieces to a wall mural.  I have never stopped loving pottery, I simply wanted more.  My love of clay as a working material is what will never fade.  Clay has led me to sculpture which is my true love.  Like pottery, I started out in sculpture making some pretty funky paper weights.  Sculpture has been a way for me to express my philosophies, visions of life and existence, my ideas on society and the world, and myself.  After Fredonia, I worked for an Arts Center managing their ceramic studio, and teaching a multitude of classes.  My years there were rather intense.  Since then I have returned to school and I am now in my last year of graduate school.  I will be graduating May 2011 with my MFA in ceramics.

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I will be periodically posting video logs, photographs of my work, and writings on ceramics.  Please stop in again to check out new posts.