Unit Four: Art/Life - Integrating Your Learning

This final unit focuses on integrating all of our learning and experiences this semester and applying your new skills towards making of a series of related sculptures/objects. It will be up to you to frame the creative and conceptual direction for your work, so we'll be talking about planning and designing for a series, which involves setting some parameters up front. These will include: 

• scale 
• form and shape
• color and surface design/development
• presentation and proximity re: display
• research - seeking and finding inspiration

1. Watch writer Austin Kleon's TedTalk on the idea of artistic lineages and idea development.
2. Watch Shea Hembrey's TedTalk and consider the creativity and intelligent playfulness his work exudes.
3. Reflect on these ideas and consider how you might weave them together.
4. Reflect on your work to date; consider which ideas have been the most exciting for you, or which hold the most potential for development.
5. Consider the potential influence of history and excellent art by others. Engage in relevant research to help you discover and develop your ideas. Use this research to construct a "historical lineage" that will demonstrate your understanding of at least one relevant historical and one relevant contemporary influence. You can explore the idea of influence formally, conceptually and/or technically. Your research must focus on artists and movements from within the field of ceramics. Be sure to include your research as a blog entry summarizing your constructed lineage.

Ideally you will use some idea/kernal from earlier work this semester as a starting point. What excited you most? What would you like to explore/play with more fully? 

In preparation for plannning, please do the following:

Consider the steps in the creative process? What do they involve?

* dreaming. * envisioning. *planning. *researching. *wandering. trying. failing. trying something different. more research to seek inspiration. learning from and looking at the best art that has ever been made. experimenting. refining. doing it one more time. refining craftsmanship. changing technique. contemplating. reflecting. refining. finishing.

Engage in the fullness of this process.

Remember, your goal is to create a series of related works (minimum of 3) that integrate art/life ideas in a way that is meaningful to you.

See schedule for last five weeks for a suggested timeframe for moving your work forward.

Unit Three: Objects in Clay - contemporary influences

Adrian Arleo

For this unit students are asked select at 2 - 3 objects that will be recreated in clay and used to create a sculpture that:

1. explores issues of representation, realism, abstraction
2. is 18 - 24" in at least one direction
3. integrates experiences and technical knowledge from the first two units
4. applies what you have learned about creating visual and conceptual relationships

Below are some examples of work that may inspire, but students are also asked to search for works by well known contemporary clay artists (to be included on student blogs for this unit).

Robert Arneson, Typewriter, 1966

Richard Shaw, Titanic

Richard Shaw, Camden Passage 1979

Marilyn Levine, Victoria's Bag

Tony Hepburn

Tracy Lee, Cootie Catchers 2010

Beth Lo, Rabbit, Crane, Rabbit

David Hicks

David Hicks

    

Judy Moonelis

Unit Two: Platters as Clay Canvas: Hump Molds, Composition and Drawing ... enroute to finding one's voice

For this second unit students work with hump molds to create a series of platter forms (3 total - minimum- required) that function as a clay canvas on which they can explore composition, surface design, slip painting, and a range of surface and/or glaze options (slips, sgraffito, slip trailing, underglaze, overglaze, majolica painting).

The content of each composition will be a narrative about student interests, experiences or things that are personally important. Each composition should explore the possibility of a visual narrative (how does one create a visual narrative?) and can incorporate traditional forms of self-portrait along with layered images, text, patterns, etc.

Jenny Mendes

Michael Lucero

artist unknown

To help begin developing an inventory or archive of images that are personally important students are asked to use the process of mind mapping, as well as working in pairs to talk/listen and help each other discover possibilities. The idea here is to begin to reveal to yourself the things that you are interested in. You can list initially using words, but the next step is to find/search/for develop images that can begin to evoke what is important for you in that word or that can somehow be used to help create a visual narrative that serves as a self-portrait. Once you discover a series of important images that excite you, explore ways to use the image(s) to create a composition that fills the space of your platter, demonstrates what you are learning about composition and design, and tells a story or evokes a personal narrative.

Link to image source

Here's a link to a video called, "Drawing as Thinking" - please watch!

The first composition will lead to the other two to be developed, so that in the end there is a series of platters that explore different surfaces and glaze options, but build on the idea of personal narratives and lead to increasingly complex compositional skills. Be sure to consider use of text (can stamp words into clay or write on the surface of the clay, etc) and explore ways to layer images. These works by Francis Picabia, while not a ceramic work, provides a good visualization for layering images and using these layered images as the framework for composition.

Francis Picabia 

Francis Picabia

Summary: 

For the platter unit you will develop at least 3 platter forms as follows:

1. Majolica
2. Slip painted (while clay is still leatherhard)
3. Carved and/or pressed clay

Each of the 3 platters will explore personal narratives/self-portrait ideas/stories about yourself and/or your interests. Designs will evolve from the first platter composition. Students will be guided through this process as needed.

General schedule:

Feb 5 - demo on how to make platters and shared PPT on the project

Feb 7 - one platter due leatherhard; start working on preliminary designs/compositions or mind-

mapping.

Feb 12 - one platter due bone dry - will be used for first composition and for majolica glaze; First compositional studies due (3 - 5 due!; kiln fired Sunday so have other work for bisque ready and any new glaze stuff (if there's enough glaze work to fill a kiln Val will get it loaded and fired for us. Also, search for artists whose work with majolica or image making/painting on the surface of clay is exciting to you and may provide inspiration for your platter compositions. 

Feb 14 - additional platter(s) should be started and more work on compositional studies. Will work and review during class and decide how to move forward with bisques and glazes at this point.

Feb 19 - TBD

Feb 21 - TBD - Unit 3 will likely be introduced today...

Unit One: Pinch Coil Slab Extrude Stack Carve Arrange Connect Repeat Vary Compress Transform

For this first unit students experiment with simple handbuilding exercises to explore pinching, coiling, and slab building, as well as both physical and visual texture and color via slip painting. The first steps should result in a series of 10+ forms (minimum required).

Nathan Prouty, grouping of various forms

Once the 10 forms (hollow, enclosed volumes both geometric and organic) are constructed the will be used to create composite forms by stacking and combining some of their first studies. The project culminates with a series of three sculptures that explore composition and visual relationships established through arrangement and/or surface/color/texture.

Peter Voulkos, Solano, 1958, glazed stoneware

Dennis Gallagher, Man & Broken Column, 2004

David Kiddie, Ceramic forms

Tony Hepburn

Jenny Mendes

Virginia Scotchie

Many options exist for how students can interpret this unit, which is designed to develop basic skills in forming, joining, understanding the various stages of clay drying, development of both surface texture and color. There is not really any one right or wrong answer here, which provides the opportunity for students to discover what shapes, images, colors, textures and building methods are most interesting to them.