Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 108 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

Coming to somewhere like this during summer is a way of breaking out of the kind of work-to-a-deadline mentality. It gives you an opportunity to play. It's the morning after a large storm and even though I know there are lots of dented cars and damaged crops outside, inside the walls there is a freshly washed calm. This is my second week at the International Ceramics Studio (ICS) at Kecskemet in Hungary and I am on this residential adventure without really stopping to ask the big question: Why I am doing it? I have a perfectly good workshop full of everything I need to make any thing I want. I tell myself that I need to be somewhere else without day to day pressures. There is a list of options…

On the occasion of the 80th birthday of the artist Clara Garesio her work Rebirth Mandala (2012) will be exhibited for a year in her "place of the heart", the National Museum of Ceramics Duca di Martina in Naples (Italy). At the same museum a great retrospective exhibition dedicated to Clara Garesio and supervised by Franco Bertoni took place last year. The exhibition, inaugurated on 22 October 2016 and lasted until the end of February 2017, was entitled Bloom is Result (a line by Emily Dickinson), because – as Antonella Cilento wrote – “the sole and real aim of working on oneself is growing as a plant, feeding on, playing, enjoying oneself even when the going gets tough” and Clara has never stopped enjoying herself: her work shows an infinite…

I grew up living beside the sea. Many of my childhood memories have the beach as a background and I used to love playing in the sand dunes at Murlough nature reserve in County Down, Northern Ireland. Walking on the shore I could easily get lost in the linear patterns on the tide coupled with those on the beach. The almost tessellated rhythmic memories of the water left after the waves receded and how the patterns seemed to become part of a bigger pattern when looking from a distance, always fascinated me. Looking at sand has become somewhat of an obsession since moving to Dubai: its configurations are almost too innumerable to describe, on all sides an arid landscape surrounds and captivates me. Here there are so many beautiful beaches…

I have been using maquettes, 3-D models, in my sculpture and pottery work for many years. A maquette is a great tool for exploring outcomes with efficient investment of energy and materials. When I was younger it was not as cumbersome to experiment on a large scale and sometimes fail and start again, but for some years now (I am 66), I have wanted to work smarter and ensure that when I embark on a large piece, whether functional or sculptural, there is a good chance for success. My recent architectural sculptures are particularly suited to experimentation on a small scale before large scale construction commences. ‘Sketching’ quickly (and three-dimensionally) and working always with solid clay for my architectural maquettes, leaves me unfettered by the usual constraints of working with…

Inchin Lee has made houses. Images redolent of windows, roofs, eaves, and walls are all references to the concept of a ‘house’. That being said, his houses have nothing to do with any representation of concrete places or objects found in our specific memories. His houses are forms that are unrelated to any intention to refer to concrete objects or invoke memories. That is, they are approximate to that of abstract art. They are neither complete forms nor are they close to any reference to a house. His houses are images and forms between matter and representation. They are vague objects between figuration and abstraction. They are things in a middle-zone between painting and sculpture, blurring the boundaries between craft and art. The Time of Clay and the Body Lee…

During the course of the last couple of decades, the studio pottery field has grown exponentially in terms of variety of processes, quality, and sheer number of excellent potters. Amid an admittedly diverse field, one prominent contemporary pottery trend exemplifies tour-de-force technical proficiency and apparent mastery of material and process, regardless of type of clay, firing, etc. Delineattions between studio pottery, industrial or commercially produced pottery, and high design, are becoming blurred. The mysteries of clay and kiln are becoming less mysterious, or at least it seems so to me. This mastery is not limited to the making of pottery, but extends to professional presentation, self-promotion, and all around business savvy. Potters emerge from their training, whether academic or apprenticeship, highly sophisticated, and develop resolved signature work earlier and earlier…

Watershed mourns the loss of our dear friend and colleague, Paula Winokur. As an artist, teacher, activist, wife, mother and devoted friend, she touched the lives of so many. In October 2017, Watershed honored Paula as a Legend at a moving ceremony in Philadelphia. Below are excerpts from the tribute to Paula by her friend and colleague, Nancy Selvin. Paula Winokur was an extraordinary artist, at once kind, thoughtful, and knowledgably outspoken. She was intentional, capable, driven, and tough, as one has to be to work in clay. She was a delightful conversationalist and, above all, she was a humanist. Paula was, as we say in Yiddish, a mensch. In Yiddish a mensch is "a person of integrity and honor”. Climate research and environmental change were at the heart of…

A feral cat is any cat that was born in the wild and has not had friendly contact with humans. Cats that were once kept as pets and now live on their own are called strays, and are not considered feral. Feral cats are characterized by fearful behavior: fleeing when approached, and attacking when cornered. If you’re thinking, “I know geriatric potters are supposed to rate a certain license, but what in the world do feral felines have to do with a conference on wood-fired ceramics?” Well, stay tuned. Those of us whose introduction to wood firing began in the 1970s have a perverse debt of gratitude to the oil embargo, which began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil…

Chinese ceramic accessories originated in the Neolithic period; pottery bracelets of various shapes have been found in the archaeological sites of Banpo and Miaodigou. The pottery bracelets used to decorate ancestors have also been unearthed from the relics of Yangshao culture and Longshan culture. Obviously, the pottery bracelet is the original form of ceramic costume accessories. As the turning point for the development of ceramic costume accessories, the Song Dynasty showed great interest in producing imitation-jade bracelets, which were made from ceramic materials due to people’s preference for jade. Ceramic bracelets can be mistaken for jade ones since they were covered in a smooth glaze, which simulated the mild and bright texture of jade. After the imperial kilns were established in the early Qing dynasty, the Qianlong emperor played a…

The first event of the annual NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference is always the Gallery Expo on the Tuesday evening before the program begins. Ceramics galleries and clay centers are set up in booths near the retail exhibit hall and it is a feast of functional pots, plus some sculptural work. There are cash bars set up and it is the time to ease in to the ‘meet and greet’ that is at the heart of the conference. This conference attracts all those who are interested in the ceramic arts: potters, sculptors, installation artists, performance artists, collectors, gallerists, writers, curators and, most of all, students. My first NCECA was when I was in my last year of my undergraduate studies, 1992, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.…

I am a Toronto-based ceramic artist and arts journalist. I am also someone who has invested a great deal of time and academia in dissecting society’s relationships with “the other” with respect to art and artistic expression. With that in mind, I was determined to seek out the ever-growing Aboriginal ceramics communities in Australia. This past fall I spent three months in residency in Sydney, and a week in November in the Northern Territory. I not only saw the sights and hiked the awe-inspiring trails, but I spent quality time with the Hermannsburg Potters just north of Alice Springs in Central Australia. Unfortunately, logistics prevented me from visiting the Ernabella Arts Centre and artists Derek Thompson and Tjimpura Williams whom I had met at the Big Pot Factory in Jingdezhen,…

The Two Gods of He-He are also known as the Two Sages of Harmony and Union, a collective name of two prominent monks – Shide and Hanshan – who evolved into folk immortals who governed marital affairs and became the symbol of the Chinese Cupid. Its image is of one man holding a lotus flower while the other holds a round box in both hands. The lotus flower being held symbolizes ‘twin lotus flowers on one stalk’ and the box symbolizes ‘a good union’. This is because the homophonic word represents harmony, auspiciousness and happiness in Chinese, and is mostly used for representing a happy marital union. In Chinese ceramic art, people are impressed by the profound skills, rich colors and exquisite patterns. Studying the meaning behind the art of…

As a child I was always engrossed in, and obsessed with, imagery. When I would look at books or magazines the pictures were far more important to me than the text; only after the desire for the visual was sated would I even consider reading. In fact, I would often stare at the words looking for images and patterns to appear from the jumble of letters and paragraphs, which they often did. Reading was third on my list of priorities when digesting any form of printed media. Drawing was the same; it was my language, and writing always seemed like such a waste of good drawing time. Of course, the irony of now writing this is not lost on me, but I would find so much pleasure in drawing throughout…

Año Nuevo Island sits in the rough waters of the Pacific Ocean a half-mile off the coast of California, fifty-five miles south of San Francisco. This small, battered landmass is one of the most densely populated animal refuges on earth.1 Access to the island is limited to scientific researchers and park personnel. The Año Nuevo State Reserve, as it is called, is owned and operated by the California Park Service. It serves as an important breeding ground for northern elephant seals, threatened Steller sea lions, numbers of harbour seals as well as the nesting locale for various sea birds including Brandt's Cormorants, Western Gulls, Pelagic Cormorants, Rhinoceros Auklets, Pigeon Guillemots, Cassin's Auklets, and Black Oystercatchers. On the island, the football sized Rhinoceros Auklet nests in underground burrows dug into the…

In the bone dry or bisque state, fingerprints can disturb the soluble salt deposit on the clay surface causing a noticeable flashing or discoloration on the fired clay. Most potters have experienced the effects of soluble salt migration in a clay body that can occur in the drying, bisque, or glaze firing stages. The industry term is ‘scumming’, and it presents itself as efflorescence, or white crystal powder, forming on the surface of the clay. It can be observed on random parts of the clay body surface but is most often seen on edges or high points which dry faster than other parts. Faster drying increases the ‘wicking’ action of the soluble salts that travel to the surface of the clay with the evaporating water. Textured surfaces or the ridges…

In Romagna/Italy, by sfoglia we mean homemade pasta, with which we get tagliatelle, cappelletti and other wonders of our gastronomic tradition. In fact there is a link between that type of pasta and the sfoglia I used until a few years ago with great fun and a bit of effort, to make the dunes and other ceramic reliefs. Too bad they were not edible like tagliatelle, or maybe it is better that way, because the majolica, like the porcelains, do not age, do not go bad; they keep for a long time. Ceramics is among the longest-living materials; think of the ancient ceramic pieces that are found in the archaeological excavations. The technique of the sfoglia or slab, is rather simple, and I particularly like it for the gestures and…