these things don't hold water

by gwendolyn yoppolo

Figure 1  Rudolf Staffel, Light Gatherer,  photo by the artist.

Figure 1  Rudolf Staffel, Light Gatherer,  photo by the artist.

        I wasn’t searching for it when I stumbled into one of Rudolf Staffel’s Light Gatherers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art years ago.  It was just a random singular display, alit on a pedestal near the restroom I was headed to, my senses taking a break from searching for meaning in works of art.  Words stopped when I came upon that piece, as if it had gathered my breath and thought along with the light.  The idea of using the dense materiality of ceramic to hold the non-substantial opened a new landscape to me, focused as I had been on making pots for eating and drinking.  The feeling of touch in the Light Gatherer lent a sense of imperfection; yet the form was radiant with light.  The piece felt at once unrefined and transcendental.  It was one of the first times I directly felt the metaphoric power of the vessel form, here showing the human wrestle with incarnation in the material world to reach for and hold the abstract, uncontainable mystery and power of light. 

Figure 2 Rudolf Staffel, Bowl, 1969, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 2 Rudolf Staffel, Bowl, 1969, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

We feel our way into a vessel’s metaphors of containment and purpose in a visceral way, making connections to our own lived experiences and emotional associations.  The message from the utilitarian object is one of sensory allusion, within the context of the engagement posed by the function.  For me, that Staffel piece evoked early memories of playing under a blazing canopy of leaves illuminated by sunlight; or sitting in church with my mom, gazing through the stained glass windows; or looking out from a warm house through a sparkling frosty windowpane at a snowed-in world.  The idea that you could gather the source of those sensory impressions in a vessel caused me to envision human aspirations towards truth or goodness.  It’s true that a vessel, with bounded interior and charged exterior spaces, serves as a metaphor for the body.  But beyond that, there is symbolism of functionality:  the vessel as a container can display or protect, preserve or serve its contents.  Staffel’s pieces as gatherers operate with a gentle and open coalescence rather than an intellectual or intentional constriction.  Thus the forms flow openly and loosely towards the light they gather. 

These layers of metaphor are also embodied in work related to eating and drinking.  Our relationships to food anchor us in the material world while also giving form to our intangible experience, using sensuous engagement to strike chords of meaning.  Think of all the food metaphors we use in talking about our inner lives:  we offer food for thought, or we talk about digesting information, having good taste, steeping ourselves in something, or putting something on the back burner.  In the kitchen, we transform food into nourishment.  The tools we use in that transformation – infusers, separators, grinders, reamers, sieves – can correlate to our emotional and mental processes.  I am reminded of a passage from an Anais Nin novel in which she describes a character’s emotional state using a sieve as a metaphor:  “Sabina had always moved so fast that all pain had passed swiftly as through a sieve leaving a sorrow like children’s sorrow, soon forgotten . . .  [Now] The silvery holes of her sieve against sorrow granted her at birth had clogged” (From A Spy in the House of Love, p. 92-3).  A sieve allows some things to pass while also determining what to hold onto, letting the liquids drain away to reveal the jewels.  Keeping the flow moving is crucial.

Figure 3 gwendolyn yoppolo, sieve and bowl, matte crystalline glazed porcelain.

Figure 3 gwendolyn yoppolo, sieve and bowl, matte crystalline glazed porcelain.

Openwork in ceramics has always held my attention, whether it was cut away areas of a double-walled form that allowed peeks of the inner chamber, or forms that were more hole than substance that held a space at once apart and accessible.  The latter constitute what I have come to call “breathable” forms – these allow for the passage of light, air, matte crystalline glazed porcelain. water, while still providing a structured space to hold solid forms.  In my work breathable forms range from sieves and separators to colanders and baskets, and include a series I tend to call bone bowls.  What does it mean that these forms don’t hold water?  The movement of air and water metaphorically keeps things fresh, keeps things from rotting or stagnating.

Figure 4 gwendolyn yoppolo, sieve funnel, matte crystalline glazed porcelain.

Figure 4 gwendolyn yoppolo, sieve funnel, matte crystalline glazed porcelain.

Figure 5 gwendolyn yoppolo, bone bowl, matte crystalline glazed porcelain.

Figure 5 gwendolyn yoppolo, bone bowl, matte crystalline glazed porcelain.

This type of form breaks down the dichotomy of interior and exterior space; the inner life of the form flows seamlessly into the space around the form.  It makes me think of the way Merleau-Ponty describes the relationship between the perceiving subject and her world.  Instead of separating the organism from the environment, he connects them “through inherence of the one who sees in that which [s]he sees” (p. 163, The Primacy of Perception).  It is in this undivided state that we live, caught up completely in the environment around us.  The breathable form allows for movement back and forth; it, like the light gatherers, is not holding on so tightly to its contents, preferring a permeability in its boundary.

Figure 6 Rudolf Staffel, Light Gatherer, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 6 Rudolf Staffel, Light Gatherer, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Staffel’s Light Gatherers opened me up to the symbolic level of functionality.  Working on that level over the years, I sometimes produced an object with a less practical, more ambiguous function.  My mom would say, “That’s a thinking thing.”  She knew that that piece was developing ideas and that its function was to inspire musings, even though it looked like it may have some obscure use in the kitchen.  A thinking thing may or may not hold water, but it does grow thoughts.

If you are in the Philadelphia area, there is currently a collection of Rudolf Staffel’s work on display in Gallery 119 of the Philadelphia Art Museum in an installation called At the Center:  Masters of American Craft.

We Love Arrowmont

With the recent wildfires that have affected the Arrowmont School of Art and Craft campus and the larger community of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, we wanted to share some thoughts and memories of just how special Arrowmont is to all of us here at Objective Clay. To help Arrowmont recover, Please follow this link and support their rebuild effort.

http://www.arrowmont.org/support/rebuild-fund/

Kip O'Krongly:

Collaboration between Kip O'Krongly and David Kring. Photo by David Kring.

Collaboration between Kip O'Krongly and David Kring. Photo by David Kring.

An experience at Arrowmont that stands out for me is the unique creative opportunity provided by the Surface Forum – I had a chance to attend back in January of 2015.  As a full time ceramic artist, it’s often hard to carve out space for experiment and play.  But for those ten days, I was surrounded by peers and mentors all doing just that.  Beyond the personal exploration, there were some lovely collaborations that evolved during our time in the studio together – one I particularly enjoyed was with David Kring.  The pairing of my lighter imagery with his darker figures was fun, humorous, and eye opening.  Creative opportunities like those provided by the Surface Forum don’t come along very often. I’m incredibly grateful to Arrowmont for their deep commitment to a nurturing space where people (at all stages!) can continue to develop and refine their craft. 

Sunshine Cobb

When I learned of the fire that was threatening the Arrowmont Campus,  I couldn’t help reflect about the time I spent there and how if the campus was lost how many wonderful future experiences for the ceramic and arts community would be lost.  It is sometimes impossible to notice the moments that upon reflection will be significant in one’s life.  I can remember more than once in my times at Arrowmont over the last 5 years, thinking “Wow! This is a moment to remember.” Within our community there are not many times we can come together creatively. For me Arrowmont has been a place to teach people, mentor folks up and coming and find creative connections that have been unique to my time at Arrowmont. I count myself so blessed to have met so many amazingly creative people at Arrowmont that have become confidants, advisors and the best of friends.

Doug Peltzman

Arrowmont is profoundly important to the history and future of craft education in America. My love and appreciation for the place, the people, and the creative space that Arrowmont provides runs deep. I feel profoundly connected to the community and part of something much bigger than myself. Arrowmont helped shape the artist I am today, and by supporting the school you can give others that same opportunity.

A. Blair Clemo

Student Candice Gooch-Ward and Blair Clemo showing off their Objective Clay T-shirts during a 2014 Summer Workshop at Arrowmont. 

Student Candice Gooch-Ward and Blair Clemo showing off their Objective Clay T-shirts during a 2014 Summer Workshop at Arrowmont. 

Arrowmont has had such a strong impact for me as an artist and an educator because it engages the craft community is so many ways.

Arrowmont connects us through craft. My first experience there connected me to an amazing group of potters through the Utilitarian Clay Conference VI. We went on to form this collective, Objective Clay, and my peers here have become some of the most important voices to me in the field the last few years.

Arrowmont provides a platform to share new ideas. In 2015, my colleague Jason Hackett and I installed a two-person exhibition in the Wolpert Gallery. The conversations leading up to that show were some of the most critical and challenging I have had since graduate school. This is in part due to the type of place Arrowmont is; a place to think deeply about craft and our individual connection to it, a place to both honor and challenge the history of making by hand.

Arrowmont enriches my experience as an educator. I taught a one-week intensive in 2014 and was struck by how quickly my class came together to help educate eachother. I had a broad range of students, from a full-time tenured clay professor to a fiber artist who had never touched clay before. Engaging with such a broad range of experience and concerns really stretched my thinking as an educator, and the community that sprung from student helping eachother along was really inspirational. I took a serious lesson from that and always try to encourage a classroom where everyone works together, to push eachother forward.

Jennifer Allen

I have had the great fortune to visit the Arrowmont campus numerous times. One of my top stays came this past summer when I taught a one week workshop (August 7-13). My class was firing on all cylinders. They were an energetic bunch, eager to learn and push themselves into unchartered territory. They were openly exchanging ideas with each other from day one. This, I firmly believe is one of the most important attributes of a successful class, when the students learn as much from each other as from the instructor. After all, it's all about the group dynamic. I didn't have any traditional students in my class except for my assistant. Most were established potters that were seeking change. Some were teachers, one was a budding potter with a lot of talent and ambition. They were all gems. 

I have taught in a variety of settings and am the most comfortable exchanging ideas at places like Arrowmont. The speed and the intensity of a one or two week course is unparalleled in nourishing the creative spirit.  Furthermore, Arrowmont's campus with its numerous communal spaces encourages meaningful conversations and builds lasting friendships. I had never spent much time in Hughes Hall until this summer. Every day at 5 o'clock, my class hosted "happy hour" on the porch. It was a way for us to decompress from the studio before heading to dinner. To me, this was an essential part of our exceptional group dynamic. Being outside the classroom environment in a casual setting helped us grow closer. I will remember my time with my August 2016 students fondly and look forward to the new and improved version of Hughes Hall.

Please join us in helping Arrowmont rebuild. It is a vital part of our global arts and crafts community.

Holiday Sale Invited Artists

We are so honored to have such an amazing group of potters join us for the Objective Clay Holiday Sale. We wanted to share some of our thoughts on how we selected the invited artists.

Doug Peltzman invites Adam Field
I first met Adam in 2012 at the Utilitarian Clay Symposium. We instantly connected on many levels. One being our somewhat compulsive tendency to focus on every detail in the objects we make. Another being our desire to share knowledge, work hard and have fun. In that sprit, we have taught numerous workshops together over the past few years. We love the interplay when working together and when sharing our approaches to clay. I have a deep respect for Adam’s dedication to his family, his work, and the ceramics community at large. His commitment is inspiring, to say the least. I am honored and excited to have his stunning pots in the show this year!

Lindsay Oesterritter invites Tom Jaszczak
I first saw Tom Jaszczak's work when I visited Sandy Simon at Trax Gallery. Some of Tom's dishes were being used at the dinner table." Yes!" I thought to myself.  A few months later, I happened to be teaching a summer workshop at Penland, and Tom is one of the current ceramic residence there.

 I like that he keeps his forms relatively simple, lets the clay speak through the slips and glazes, and responds to the fired surface with the addition of clean geometric shapes, helping to highlight some of the subtleties in the surface. So nice. 

Jennifer Allen Invites Kari Radasch
I have long admired Kari’s work. She is fearless…unafraid to transform her work (even drastically) in order to communicate how her work reflects her changing life. 

What I love most about Kari’s work is it’s inherent playfulness. It evokes feelings of joy and optimism. The decoration seems to fall on her forms with the randomness of scattered confetti, grounded between floating layers of luster and thinly veiled white slip.  The forms are equally as spirited. While the “meat” of the form is handsome and stoic, details like scalloped edges, pillowed handles, stickered appliques and hanging charms add a sense of whimsy and nostalgia.

Kari's bowl

Kari's bowl

This pot (pictured to the right) is a new favorite. My kids are drawn to the colorful illustration and the handle fits their little mittens perfectly. Plus, they love that it holds snacks of all kinds.

Aside from Kari’s work, I admire her as an individual. Kari and I became fast friends when we demonstrated alongside eachother at Florida Heat Surface Symposium in St. Petersburg, FL (February 2016).  As a fellow parent, I am inspired by her keen ability to balance her career and motherhood. She embodies the life of a maker, a mother and a teacher with eloquence, class and individuality. Her personality shines as bright as her work.

Jennifer Allen and Kari Radasch at Florida Heat

Jennifer Allen and Kari Radasch at Florida Heat

I am beyond thrilled that she is joining our 2nd Annual Holiday Exhibition and am excited to share her work with all of you! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bryan Hopkins Invites Roberto Lugo
I chose Roberto Lugo to exhibit in the OC Holiday Sale. We first met when he signed up for a critique with me at the 2011 NCECA in Tampa, when he was an undergrad at KCAI and looking for input from a fellow Philly guy. Roberto is an inspirational teacher, a devoted husband, a loving father, and a caring friend. And his work rocks!

gwendolyn yoppolo Invites Kowkie Durst
When Kowkie and I met, we were both just learning how to throw pots in a class taught by Louise Harter at a community pottery in New York City.  As we worked with Louise to help build and fire a small wood kiln out in the country, our lives were transformed and we knew that we had found our passion.  After that experience, we each found our own path to take on our journey with clay.  Kowkie's work is at once comforting and unnerving.  The forms are familiar and inviting, but they present imagery that challenges cultural assumptions in a sometimes humorous way, with glimpses of processed foods, gay marriage, sweatshop labor, and gender binaries.  

Brian R. Jones Invites Victoria Christen
Victoria Christen was the first potter I met when after moving to Portland, OR ten years ago. Admirably, her work is always growing and influences that she brings into her pots like quilts and the midwest landscape ebb and flow with one another. 

My favorite tumbler by Ali!

My favorite tumbler by Ali!

Emily Schroeder Willis invites Alison Reintjes
Alison Reintjes and I met in the fall of 2001 when we were both long term residents at the Archie Bray Foundation with adjoining studio spaces.  At that time Ali was a more recent convert to clay having primarily worked in glass casting.  She had studied glass at Pilchuck just north of Seattle as well as at the Australian National University in Canberra, where I had just returned from a 4 month post-baccalaureate in ceramics.  Our friendship solidified as we relived our Australian experiences through shared storied over her husband Brandon’s delicious food! 

"Sounding" at the Missoula Art Museum.  Photo credit: Logan Photography

"Sounding" at the Missoula Art Museum.  Photo credit: Logan Photography

 During those two years together Ali and I developed a considerable friendship and have stayed in touch over time. I have always admired Ali’s work for the way she has these seemingly simple forms, layered patterns and glaze combinations that push and pull with one another. Maneuvering lines, brisk edges, rhythmic patterns, and geometric algorithms all harmonize in her work.  In the course of 15 years we have acquired a nice little collections of tumblers and bowls from her.  All are highly used but the tumbler shown is my go-to Gin & Tonic cup during hot summer days!  Another aspect I love is that Ali’s work strives for order amidst a constrained playfulness, which I feel is more prevalent in her sculpture pieces.  One of her more recent undertakings has been to pursue large-scale public art projects.  Her work has always walked this interesting line between sculpture and functional work and I am curious to see where some of these new projects lead her.

Over the past 15 years there have been both short and long trips between Chicago/Montana that have kept us in touch but one of the strongest ties that has kept us connected is both of our struggles to have children.  Ali has been a huge comforter and support to me as I struggled through 4 miscarriages and a failed IVF session, as well as being a sounding board (once we did have a child) on how to navigate the artist’s life with a child.  She has set a great example to me of prioritizing her family while still being an artist.  Ali set her studio practice on hold for four years while she raised her twins through their early years.  She is now just finishing up a home and studio renovation that will allow her to work from home!  I know that being a mom is a balancing act, but I am SO excited to see the new work that comes out of “Righteous Artworks” Studio.  And with that I am thrilled to have Ali be part of this exhibition.

A. Blair Clemo Invites Kelli Sinner

Kelli Sinner in her studio at Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin, Germany

Kelli Sinner in her studio at Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin, Germany

I met Kelli Sinner in the summer of 2012, while we shared a studio as resident artists at the Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin, Germany. We became fast friends over liters of beer and shimmying past one another in a tiny, shared kitchen. I felt an immediate kinship with Kelli and our conversations about art and life were rich seemingly without effort. She was working towards a solo show and I admired how “in the moment” her work was, many new forms and surfaces made in direct response to her experience in Berlin.

I live with several of Kelli’s pots, and they have become a part of my daily routine. They are as honest and insightful as she is. Her pots are direct and embody that living-in-the-moment feeling that I first noticed in our shared studio in Berlin. In her practice, no pot is an outlier, because each pot is addressed as an individual. I admire how varied her studio output is, each pots has just the right amount of unknown. Kelli seems to follow her ideas as they come, and her pots reflect that level of engagement. 

Kip O'Krongly Invites Yoko Sekino-Bove

The first time I met Yoko Sekino-Bove was during her 2010 McKnight residency at Northern Clay Center.  I was working as the studio materials technician and observing Yoko's process was an absolute revelation.  Her pots were delicate, powerful, and expertly crafted.  She spent much of her time at NCC testing and adapting an extensive body of cone 6 glazes - even her test tiles were beautiful little compositions.  From the simplest test tile, to her complex sculptural forms, I'm continually drawn in by Yoko's attention to detail and thoughtful execution.  But it is her ability to approach touchy subject matter with a refined and humorous touch that keeps me ever-inspired.  Thanks for joining us this holiday season, Yoko!    

Historical Pot

by Emily Schroeder Willis

There are many historical ceramic pieces influential to my studio practice.  Nearly every piece I craft has some underpinning from something seen along the journey: a handle from a English teacup, the raw surface from a Neolithic Chinese jar, a line drawn on a Mimbres bowl, a gentle ruffling of a coil from a Jomon pot. It is unbelievably difficult to pick a single piece to write about, which is why I am not going to write about only one. 

During the time I was a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation, the nearby Holter Museum of Art held an exhibition of Ancient Iranian Art titled “Wit and Wine: Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collection”, which had a profound impact on me. I had never seen nor known much about work done from that region. Being from Mingei-sota most of my influence and education up was based on East Asian ceramics and I was pleasantly surprised by this historical work.  Up to this point when I thought of Iranian ceramics, I mostly drew upon memories of highly decorated ware from the 11th - 15th century. I was completely unaware of these simpler predecessors made during the Iron Age (1000 - 800 BCE).  The minimal forms and surfaces were intriguing.  Pitchers intentionally lacking a spout or a handle held only the essence of their intended purpose, and that was moving to me.  They didn’t need the flourishes and decoration to make them extraordinary pots.  But it was in their “basic-ness” that they had a profound punctuation of form. 

Around this same time I took my first trip to Europe.  I was traveling around for several weeks and wanted to spend some time in Germany, so I could get my fix for brats, beer, and gummi bears.  Maybe a little art too. Being of nearly 100% German descent I think there are several Germanic character traits imparted at birth. The first is the gift of curt language, which I can excel in.  Many find it off-putting, but I think of it as tapping into my inner German’s “directness of speech”.  Why say 100 words when only 10 are needed? Why not get right to the point of what I am thinking rather than dance around a topic or a question for an entire conversation?  Needless to say, not everyone considers this a gift.

Earthenware Jar (1000 BCE) from the Freer Sackler Museum in Washington, DC

Earthenware Jar (1000 BCE) from the Freer Sackler Museum in Washington, DC

The second inborn trait is an economy of style. I find many Germans tend to like things simple, or as others may state, “plain and boring”.  Much of this could be based on their prudency of spending money, but I believe it comes from the same vein of their economy of language. Why put 20 ruffles on something when you can achieve the same effect with one? Or none?  There is a beauty in the simple.  

Bauhaus Museum in Berlin

Bauhaus Museum in Berlin

I bopped around Germany for several weeks, eventually landing in Berlin.  There, I visited several museums including the Bauhaus Museum. I have since made subsequent stops, but my initial visit was quite moving.  During my first trip to the Bauhaus Museum, I felt like Eve walking for the first time into Eden. All of these delicious cups, chairs, teapots, lamps, tapestries, pitchers, and jars, none of which I could touch.  All things were broken down to simplistic forms, allowing you to really see them.  The simple curves, lines and designs from the Bauhaus struck a chord in me I hadn’t really plucked before.  I had been caught up in the more is more is more and never really thought about the commonly riffed “Less is More” mantra of Mies.  At this point I really began reflecting on what could I remove. What was too much?  What was noise and what was excess in my work?

At the museum, I reflected a lot on myself and who I was as a maker.  I sensed a falseness in the work I was making.  I was creating work that wasn’t beautiful or moving to me. Why was I making objects that weren’t who I was?  Before leaving the Bauhaus Museum I stepped inside the gift shop and purchased a postcard with an image of 3 Otto Lindig pieces on it.  Those three vessels signify everything I want my work to be.  Simple. Direct. Profound. 

Three Otto Lindig Vessels from the Bauhaus Museum, Berlin

Three Otto Lindig Vessels from the Bauhaus Museum, Berlin

That Lindig postcard has had some good airtime on my studio walls over the years. From time to time an image of a new fad or a new hot little “Miss” or “Mister” ceramicist of the year has replaced it.  But it has had a stronghold in my way of thinking for over 16 years.  There are pots you fall passionately in love with for a season; your love fades or perhaps you change as a person and your taste for that work subsides. And then there are objects, objects like this simple Iranian jug or an Otto Lindig pitcher, that stick with you for the duration of your practice.  These minimal objects, twins in their own right, are some of the most profound pots I have come across.  They carry obvious parallels in their directness of form, simplistic surface and spare shapes from which I never tire.   These pieces hold in their objectness all I desire my work to become.

Vertiginous Journeys

By gwendolyn yoppolo

            I don’t like to get too comfortable.  Moving around the country every couple of years has been a way for me to stay fresh and enjoy a sense of new beginnings.  The one constant was that my studio practice was at the center of my decisions about where to go.  Paradoxically, the regular moves both served and hindered the development of my work.  In one sense, the transfer of skills to a new studio and kilns was empowering; in another sense, it threw me into perpetually new learning curves.

When I first moved to Penland in 2011, my old kiln was not happy about trying to fire cone ten crystalline glazes.  The mugs on the right show what you get when you use hypersensitive glazes that are not getting the firing cycle that they prefer.  

When I first moved to Penland in 2011, my old kiln was not happy about trying to fire cone ten crystalline glazes.  The mugs on the right show what you get when you use hypersensitive glazes that are not getting the firing cycle that they prefer.  

            This all began for me when I was an undergraduate, my mind opening to new ways of thinking and becoming aware of my own cognitive horizon and perceptual habits.  My mantra, “The peril of the structure is the cage,” was a reminder to me that though I wanted to develop a strong inner core, I also wanted to cultivate a permeability that would allow for dynamic evolution.  I later found the perfect visual and formal metaphor for this concept in studying the cell walls of diatoms and other beach rubble using a scanning electron microscope.

Studying diatoms (unicellular algae whose cell walls are made up of silica, like the one on the left) and the sand dollar on the right helped me define my aesthetic choices and also refine the conceptual implications of the forms I was choosing to make.    

Studying diatoms (unicellular algae whose cell walls are made up of silica, like the one on the left) and the sand dollar on the right helped me define my aesthetic choices and also refine the conceptual implications of the forms I was choosing to make.    

           Over time, as I studied educational theory, this restless disposition became the ground for my creative discomfort theory.  This inspiring discomfort is not painful, it is playful.  It is a way of staying open and flexible in one’s perceptions and behaviors.  It’s more like the heightened awareness that you have when you are traveling – as you try to understand and inhabit a new cultural system, geography, and language.  Your old ways of living in the world may not all apply. 

            In studio practice, there is a delicate balance between gaining mastery and staying fresh.  For someone dedicated to transformation, there may be cycles of learning to do something, then a period of improvisation and building out from that point to find new territory.  At some point for the cycle to become a dynamic spiral of growth, there may have to be a breaking down of one’s learned responses in order to discover something new.  It is up to us to decide when a habit of ours is enabling us to make the work we want to make, and when that habit has become a limitation.

These images show the evolution of my mugs since I began exploring a form that I initially was calling a vertigo design.  Some of the transformations are internal to the mug, or to the process of making.  Others you can see happening, like watching the development of a hollow handle that harmonized with the form.   

These images show the evolution of my mugs since I began exploring a form that I initially was calling a vertigo design.  Some of the transformations are internal to the mug, or to the process of making.  Others you can see happening, like watching the development of a hollow handle that harmonized with the form.   

            I recently renamed my creative discomfort theory to account for the fact that learning is nonlinear and doesn’t result in a static state of balance.  I now think about transformation as a process of dynamic disequilibrium.  Dynamic disequilibrium means that as organisms living within the ecosystem of our lives, we live in a state of flux, continuously making small adjustments as we fall in and out of balance.  Temporary states of vertigo, after all, can liberate us to find new paths.  As makers, we are always imagining new visions and ideals that guide our studio practice, and our practice in turn is always revising those visions and ideals as they unfold into material.  Usually this means that the closer we come to manifesting our visions, the more those visions morph into a new set of ideals with their own revised demands.

            We are all different in how we handle the processes of equilibration, how steadily or rigidly we hold onto our sense of equilibrium and how open we are to being nudged out of our comfort zone.  It also changes over the course of our lives - sometimes we may be more open to change than others.  It can help us get through a big project and achieve a goal when we are more rigid in our structure, after all.  As I turn my attention to teaching undergraduates at Kutztown University this year, I am grateful for the chance to help them enter the journey of a life with clay at its center.  Central to my work as an educator will be finding where each student is in her process, and intuitively sensing when to offer support and encouragement and when to nudge or challenge.  At times I may have to help some of them get comfortable, even.

VISION: BFA Exhibiton at UH

VISION:  BFA Exhibition at The University of Hawaii at Manoa.

by Shawn Spangler

At the end of each spring semester the University of Hawaii’s art gallery hosts the Bachelor of Fine Arts student exhibit.  There the public is invited to view the work these aspiring artists have been laboring over for nearly a year. Most of the process begins during the spring semester in their cluttered studio space of chaotic beauty leading them to finality. The student’s work emerges from this semester with expressive, conceptualized work displaying a focused and compellingly product from their time and effort.

This year thirty-five students exhibited their work collectively in the BFA show VISION.   The exhibition intertwines contemporary modes of presentation with site specifics in a gallery that was constructed by the Department of Art specifically for this exhibition.  Each student is allotted a space within the gallery to compose their ideas and concepts while encouraging viewers to uncover the process behind their work. The opening event begins with the annual awards ceremony and reception where over 500 attendees gather to view the completion of the BFA capstone class. The exhibition includes artists from drawing glass, fiber, printmaking, photography, sculpture, painting, and ceramics.

Every BFA student in the class is provided with their own studio space for the duration of their BFA semester while they develop their projects. This course is constructed with the goal of fostering creative thinking and problem solving skills, coupled with initiative, and discipline, aspiring to a high standard of professionalism and studio practice. The class represents the articulation of a personal vision: the result of a rigorous investigation of one’s self and work. Aided by faculty advisors, the students are pushed toward individual research and continuous revisions a proposal to strengthen the concept and final product.

Two or three professors who specialize in a range of media areas teach the B.F.A. class. This gives students the opportunity to receive critiques from a wide variety of perspectives as well as from their peers. Interaction and constructive criticism is fully encouraged from the commencement of the class until its end.

There were many engaging and compelling work exhibited in VISION.  I am highlighting a few students work I found compelling.

 

Michael Connolly

Statement:

INTENSUS INCONTRA is a place where chaos ensues, and with its core acting as a reflective portal where the viewer can see themselves from an external perspective. The flames move and flow towards the center, illuminating a reflection of one’s self. The elements of fire and clay correlate in a magnitude of ways. I am drawn to the strong similarities—­the physical characteristics of strength, force, energy, heat, and the aesthetic beauty—that these elements represent.

Momi Green

Statement:

Making has a unique way of mirroring, if not emulating life.  This body of work is a reflection of my interpretations of the club and party culture, focusing on the habitual glamorization and even glorification of the oppressed female persona.  As a millennial I have directed my gaze and research around the urban phrase “trap culture.”  This phrase refers to the drug-dealing street ghetto mafia of the early 1990’s.  The term “trap” creates a narrative that portrays women as wonting and eager for a salacious lifestyle of a “Trap Queen.”  Some of today’s trap culture can be discovered here in Honolulu, in the after-hours club scene where, similar to a origin of drug dealing and violence, this lowbrow art-trending scene continues the narrative that romanticizes women’s roles despite the fact that they are dismissed, oppressed and objectified.  The intention of my installation is to present the subjugation of women viewed through social clubs and party and play communities.

 

Genji Lamansky

Statement:

[ALL STATIONS THIS NET, ALL STATIONS THIS NET]

As a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, [break]
I am among many who suffer [break]
from the ill effects of going to war.  [break]
Fighting alongside my brothers and sisters [break]
the events that I have been a part of, [break]
and witnessed, will be forever in my mind. [break]
Through social media and mass media, [break]
the civilian may get a glimpse [break]
of the nightmares in war. [break]
I am trying to bring to light the realities of PTS (D) [break]
faces to the statistics, and the struggles we face every day.

[HOW COPY? OVER.]