A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

On This Page

Javier Jasso

Lecturer

Contact

Bio

Javier Jasso is an artist born in Chicago and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico. He lives and works on the Southside of Chicago, Back of the Yards neighborhood. Javier is a metaphorical and literal builder. Many of the materials he uses come from recycled sources such as metal, plaster, plastic concrete and wood, materials that he collects from his neighborhood, along with ceramic, a medium and practice that he carries with him from his hometown of alfareros in Guadalajara, Mexico, and that he also links to his birth place, Chicago, a city that was known for its brick and ornament terracotta factories in the early 1900s.

Through sculptures and installations, he challenges, and doubts our assumptions of space, and place. He uses these materials because they produce an entry point into questions around foundation for protective structures in global society, nomadism, ideas of selfhood, origin, home and displacement.

He received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from The University of Illinois of Chicago. He was a fellow at the DFI where he was awarded $12,000. Javier’s shows include: Co-prosperity Sphere, Ignition Project Space, Evanston Art Center, Humboldt Park Vocational Center, McLean County Art Center, Gallery 400, University Club Chicago, and Sullivan Gallery. 
Publications: TheComp magazine, New Art Examiner, Spontaneous Vegetation podcast, New City.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

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.

Class Number

1170

Credits

3

Description

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.

Class Number

2128

Credits

3

Description

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.

Class Number

1185

Credits

3

Description

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.

Class Number

1186

Credits

3