Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 114 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

On the occasion of Brian Rochefort's first institutional solo exhibition Absorption by the Sun, at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the artist sat down with curator Alexandra Terry to discuss his latest works and his artistic process. AT You started working with ceramics when you were 14 years old. What drew you to this medium, and what elements of it motivated you to pursue it as an artistic practice? BR When I was in middle school my brother, who is two years older than me, was taking ceramics classes as a tenth grader. I was always into drawing and painting but I was fascinated by the possibilities with ceramics, it was completely new to me. So when I got to high school the first class I signed up for…

In the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, a contemporary ceramic exhibition titled The Blending and Interaction of Civilization: an Exhibition of the East-West Dialogue in Ceramic Art included a strong reputable international cast. Four well-known ceramists were invited: Jacques Kaufmann, professor at Applied Art School in Vevey, Switzerland and immediate past-president of the International Academy of Ceramics (AIC) (current president at the time of the exhibition); Wayne Higby, Professor at Alfred University, former vice-President of the International Academy of Ceramics (AIC); Zhu Legeng, Professor and Dean at the Research Institute of Art Creation, Chinese National Academy of Arts, and Rokubey Kiyomizu VIII, professor at Kyoto University of Art & Design. The exhibition was curated by Professor Fang Lili, Director of the Institute of Anthropology of Art at the Chinese…

I am walking along Porzellangasse in Vienna on a hot June day in 2018, looking for a particular plaque. Finally, at house number 51 I spot a simple porcelain tile with a cobalt script that declares it as the site where in 1718 the first porcelain was produced in Vienna. A few days earlier I had taken a guided tour of an exhibition, called Ewig Schön (Eternally Beautiful) at MAK, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Arts) in Vienna. The Museum held an expansive exhibition of Viennese Porcelain, collected over the period of 300 years of its production. Some 1000 objects were on display, most of them from the Museum’s own collection directly sourced from the manufactory. Only a few items were on loan from other museums or…

London I met Prue Venables when she was a student on the Harrow Pottery course in the early 1980s, when I was invited by the course director Jerome Abbo to teach one day a week. I did not teach her ceramics − I was the wrong sort of potter to be employed in the clay studios, where the wheel was still the main focus. But I did run writing projects with the students and drawing workshops alongside Andrew Greaves. It was a period of creative expansion, when the course was broadening its interests beyond the bulk production of handmade tableware that had been its emphasis in the 1960s and 1970s. It was clear that Prue loved being a student there and immersed herself in all aspects of it; she was…

A great deal of time, thought and text have been expended either distinguishing the difference between Art and Craft or declaring the difference obsolete. The former speculation is often clumsy and not very helpful. The latter was, will and will always be a vain enterprise. The same cause drives the ineffectiveness of the first and the futility of the second. Every object, every person, theory or thought is binary: essential and political. Defining something as craft is a purely political act. Most definitions of craft are grounded in something essential to the object, its material or whether it was made by hand or machine. Humans are essentially political animals, however. The way objects are categorized may change, evolve, even become more egalitarian − but it will never disappear. Any functional…

Whatever put elegance in language, that's what happening here. – Rumi 1 Sandy Lockwood is equally articulate with and about clay – one of the rare makers whose writings about her practice are worth reading. She expresses what many of us struggle to say, or pay others to compensate for our failure to do so. Her essays accessible on her website: https://www.sandylockwood.com.au. Bear me out. Her preference for wood fired salt glaze shows she is attempting to stage intention with happenstance, in the theatre of her kiln. She composes clay bodies with material savvy - some so highly textured as to resemble plastic sand, others vitreous as translucent porcelain – all expand her working vocabulary. Much of her functional work features clays with butterscotch tonality alternating with freckling from flame…

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943 Annika Teder is one of the most creatively impressive Estonian ceramic artists. Her works are without exception three-dimensional figures each of which embody an emotion, thought or experience of the artist, and serve beauty and fantasy. One of the focal points of Teder’s work throughout the last decade is a love for expressive form and texture. In general, she prefers to work through the medium by way of creating extensive series that are then exhibited at solo exhibitions. Each series focuses on developing a single concept; a single idea In order to understand the…

Making tiles is relatively quick,” reveals tile maker Bronwyn Williams-Ellis, who works from her studio in Bath, UK offering a refreshing alternative to mass “Far more time is absorbed with the client’s end of the project, decision making and also waiting for the areas that are to be tiled to be completed and then measured. It can be disastrous designing and making a tile panel of a fixed size for a wall that may change size and shape before it is complete.” Although she makes individual ceramic sculptures, commissioned tiles are the financial backbone of the business for Bronwyn, who has 30 years’ experience as a ceramicist. “I charge between £18 to £30 for each decorated tile. For the amount of work involved I should charge more. “Commissions of any…

Formal education within fine art institutions often direct students to learn from art history. It is common to see artists continue their research to include the work of other artists including ‘old masters’. A profound influence for Bernard Leach was William Blake1. In his book The Potters Challenge2, Leach writes, “It is as Blake says: “Do not pursue skills, technique will follow the idea. The idea will find technique, it is included in the real gift.”3 Blake’s quotation provided Leach a dictum, which he could use as a framework of reference to support his work in his field of art, ceramics and philosophy. Bradiotti writes, “Why should we pursue this project? For no reason at all. Reason has nothing to do with this. Lets just do it for the hell…

Still present but no longer available One of the constants in ceramics is that one or more of our favorite raw materials will go out of production, primarily for economic reasons. For example, while many feldspars are geologically present their economic value has diminished to the point of ending their production life. This situation is complicated by the fact that some are still found in studio storage jars, giving the impression they are available. Frequently, a potter does not realize their favorite feldspar is no longer being mined until it is time to reorder. At this point the potter has to decide on a substitute that will meet their requirements in either a clay body or glaze formula. Why are feldspars important and what are some viable solutions for their…

Simone Leigh studied ceramics with Mike Thiedeman at Earlham College, a small Quaker school in Indiana. She still uses clay as an element of many of her works, but her purview extends far beyond the usual realms of ceramics. She thinks big, both in dimensions and in concepts, addressing in particular the black female experience. I first saw her work in an exhibition at H&R Block Artspace, part of the Kansas City Art Institute, when NCECA was held in Kansas City in 2016. I was obviously late to the discovery, for that exhibition, titled Simone Leigh: I ran to the rock to hide my face the rock cried out no hiding place was not at the emerging level but instead demonstrated a powerful multi-medium achievement (both sculpture and video), well…

Many of the artists who defined the postwar American contemporary ceramics movement were often referred to by a single name: Voulkos, Audio, Kaneko for example but only one was most commonly referred to by her first name, “Toshiko.” Rarefied air indeed. Toshiko Takaezu was a consummate artist, every facet of her life was done with purpose and interconnected. Her life was an artwork; gardening, cooking, and the tea ceremony, all shared equal footing with her ceramic art for which she was best known. She was a prolific creator. Despite a healthy market for her works, she still managed to fill her house, studio, and garden with pieces of every scale imaginable. Before her death in 2011 she donated numerous pieces to various museums throughout the country but many still remain…

In March 2019, Janet Smith commenced the monumental task of building a mighty Anagama kiln on her rural property at Roto-O-Rangi, in the picturesque backblocks of Cambridge, Waikato, New Zealand. A large concrete pad was laid, followed by family arriving to erect a shed to cover the area where the kiln was to be built Master Kiln builder and designer Duncan Shearer, worked with Janet from the start with the arduous task of sourcing and collecting the thousands of fire-bricks needed. Approximately 3000 assorted bricks were needed, as well as 279 arch bricks. The arch almost spans the length of the kiln (minus the chimney area), which is almost four metres long. Janet approached her exciting undertaking with practicalities in mind, including that the Anagama is loaded by climbing into…

Indigenous art forms have become part and parcel of today’s cultural development. It is the symbolisation processes that were replete with physical qualities in traditional civilisation. These attributes are found in clothing, housing, objects of religious worship, and ceremonies such as dance form and entertainment. The symbolisation process is therefore, an endorsement of certain fine distinctions that have become a way of life. This paper investigates the adaptation of these symbols into modern pottery objects to satisfy and sustain their cultural values and aid understanding of some of the Niger Delta Traditions. The paper also highlights the hidden beauty that the symbols possess as the used parts of pottery forms. Sherry B. Ortner’s 1979 research formula was used to explain the names and meaning of the symbols and describe their…