Nancy Fleischman

This multilevel class is for students with or without experience in wheel throwing. Beginning students are introduced to ideas, materials and techniques for throwing vessels. They acquire the necessary skills to construct and analyze a wide range of vessel forms. Intermediate and advanced students continue their individual development of throwing, glazing and firing kilns. Course discussions focus on issues around the vessel to acquire critical understanding of containers and their functions, as well as using the wheel as a means for constructing sculptural forms.

An exploration of 20th and 21st century conceptual ceramic vessels focusing on the ways in which artists harness the rich history of ceramic production for contemporary purposes. The course will cover ideas of utility, domesticity, decorativeness, and ritual; it will explore relationships between industrial and digital mass production and handcraft; it will examine vessels as metaphors for the body, as carriers of culturally specific meaning, and as expressions of personal and political identity.
We will begin our examination of the conceptual vessel with an overview of ceramic history from the Arts and Crafts Movement through to the advent of what Anne Wilson dubbed ?Sloppy Craft.? We will consider famous 20th century works such as Duchamp?s Fountain, Meret Oppenheim's Object, and Judy Chicago?s Dinner Party, as well as canonical ceramics figures such as George Ohr, Peter Voulkos, Robert Arneson, Kathy Butterly, Betty Woodman, Viola Frey, and Beatrice Wood. Other artists will include: Ai Weiwei, Roberto Lugo, Grayson Perry, Diego Romero, Arlene Shechet, Francesca Dimattio, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Kukuli Velarde, Ann Agee, Liu Jianhua, Milena Muzquiz, Laurent Craste, Ehren Tool, Julie Green, and many others.

Readings will include excerpts from Glenn Adamson?s Thinking Through Craft and The Craft Reader, Elaine Cheasley Paterson and Susan Surette?s Sloppy Craft: Postdisciplinarity and the Crafts, and Moira Vincentelli?s Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels.

With a research intensive focus on the development of concepts, students will produce two vessel-based projects by any combination of hand building, wheel throwing, slip casting, 3d printing, and/or found object manipulation. In addition, students will prepare one 10-15 minute presentation on either a specific culture?s ceramic production or on a contemporary artist producing conceptual ceramic vessels.

The question of what happens if... is always asked. This class takes on this question and allows for those experimental answers to be developed into distinctive surfaces on ceramic. The unique possibilities of materials used traditionally and experimentally with clay to develop unique skins. Decoration, pattern, design, print and painting incorporating techniques including glaze, slip, decals, etching and many others will be demonstrated. The normal function of glaze is treated technically in this class however we also examine the conceptual ideas of glaze. Ideas of skin, cover, shell, membrane, crust, coating, rind, peel, film, coat, casing, tissue, layer and other ideas of these conceptual themes are explored in this class. We will look at many artists including historical and contemporary artists. Some artists include Jim Melchert¿s Changes Performance, Phobe Cummings, Roberto Lugo, Ken Price, Ron Nagle, Brian Rochefort, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Tyler Lotz, Erin Furimsky, Takuro Kuwata, Peter Pincus, Sergei Isupov, Jun Kaneko, Betty Woodman, Merek Cecula, Linda Swanson, Grayson Perry, Paul Scott, HAAS Brothers, Caroine Slotte and Magdalene Odundo, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess to name some of the artists that are explored conceptually and technically within this course. Students are expected to give one presentation on an artist of choice dealing with surface and provide one reading on that artist a group discussion will follow each presentation.

This course will allow students to create two self-directed projects along with this there is the production of weekly explorations on glaze and surface that are discussed as a group allowing for the exchange of knowledge.

In their work students will consider the possibilities of 'multiples' as duplicate, copy, replica, counterfeit, translation, group, growth, repetition, representation, pattern making, modular system, edition, progression, mutation, doppelganger, imitation, clone, reproduction, sequence, symbolism, mass production, additions over time and more. What does it mean to create in Multiples? Why make so many at this point in time when we live in a world where we already have so many objects? These are just some of the questions that the class will take on. All techniques in conjunction with clay will be used in this class. However, there will be demonstrations on making multiple part molds and slip casting, jiggering, glaze and surface manipulation.

Some artist that we will study in this course include Paul Cummins, Rachel Kneebone, Caroline Slotte, Susan York, Richard Shaw, Wendy Walgate, Alexandra Englelfriet, Edmund de Waal, Walter McConnell, Bonnie Kemske, Hella Jongerius, Belinda Blignaut, Janet Deboos, Gabriel Orozco, Alissa Volchkova, Dylan Beck. Readings will come from a variety of sourse some of which might include Thinking Through Craft by Glen Adamson, Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art by Clare Lilley and CRAFT edited by Tanya Harrod, The White Road by Edmund De Waal.

This course will allow students to create two self-directed projects. Students should to be able to produce a one and two part mold on their own upon the completion of this class.