Javier Jasso

This course provides an introduction to clay as a material. Participants will be introduced to a wide variety of methods and techniques to build, decorate, and glaze ceramic. Demonstrations in Hand-building, coiling, slap-building and surface application including glaze development and application, slip decoration and firing methods, will give students a proficiency in working with clay and in the ceramic department. Introductions to the rich and complex history of ceramic through readings, lectures and museum visits, will provide students with exposures to the critical discourse of contemporary ceramic. This is primarily a beginner's course but open to all levels of students.

Readings will vary but typically include, Hands in Clay by Charlotte Speight and John Toki. Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art by Clare Lilley. Ten thousand years of pottery by Emmanuel Cooper. 20th Century Ceramics By Edmund de Waal. Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community by Jenni Sorkin. The course will look at artist like Magdalene Odundo, George E. Ohr, Shoji Hamada, Roberto Lugo and Nicole Cherubini as well as historic ceramic from the Art Institutes of Chicago?s collection.

Students are expected to complete 3 projects by the end of the semester, Biweekly readings will be part of the course.

This intro course will allow students to build upon and deconstruct our preconceived notions of what a 'pot' is. Can a pot be a subversive act of defiance? Can it express pleasure, grief or discomfort? We will explore what a pot can say and do beyond mere function. Investigating materiality, process, and conceptual frameworks the pot will serve as a form through which we?ll unpack issues ranging from the primordial to the celestial. Students will learn technical ceramic processes while examining the histories, practices, and conceptual potentialities of the vessel.

We will look at artists who employ the vessel in their practice in a critical, subversive, personal and humorous ways. Some of the artists include Rubi Neri, Betty Woodman, Kathy Butterly, Theaster Gates, Sahar Khouri, Bari Ziperstein and more. Readings will include excerpts from ?Documents of Contemporary Art: CRAFT? and authors such as Glen Adamson, Edmund de Waal and Tanya Harrod.

Students should expect to produce a body of work consisting of assigned and self directed projects to be presented in a culminating midterm and final critique.

This class is designed to explore our perception and understanding of diminutive, poetic, intimate, fantastic, fetishistic and body objects. The potential and significance of the intimate and small-scale object will be explored. Tools and methods of construction will be introduced allowing the student to investigate various clays, surface treatments and types of firing. Students are free to work sculpturally, figuratively, with the vessel or a combination of other formal strategies appropriate to their interests and personal investigation. Installation strategies will be discussed with opportunities to explore various presentation possibilities. Combining ceramic objects with found objects and otherwise non- ceramic materials will be an important component of the class. Lectures will address the subject historically and within contemporary art.

This course will serve to illuminate and complicate the opportunities and challenges associated with making ceramics on the throwing wheel. Invented in Mesopotamia roughly 5000 years ago, the potter's wheel was a tool intended to speed up and increase consistency in the production of utilitarian ceramic vessels. The spectrum of practitioners using the potters wheel today spans the world and ranges from traditional artisans, design and crafts people to contemporary artists. Working with regard to this dynamic reality, this course will work to address and accommodate all manner of interests with the goal to enable students to make diligent use of the potter?s wheel, both in consideration of historical and contemporary methods and dialogs.
Advanced Throwing is for students already proficient in throwing techniques Pre rec. Wheel Throwing Fundamentals and Intermediate Throwing CER

We will look at artists working both in traditional and non-traditional methods. Artists will vary, but some we will look at include: Yuta Segawa, Dove Drury, Adam Silverman, Donte K. Hayes, Carl-Harry St?lhane, Gerrit Grimm, Steve Lee, and more. Readings will include articles covering topics about the convergence of fine art and craft, how objects affect our daily life and rituals, the place of craft within contemporary society. Specific authors may be : Jenni Sorkin, Okakura Kakuzo and Edmund de Waal

Students should expect to produce two bodies of work consisting of 20-30 finished pieces during the semester, to be presented in mid-term and final critiques.