Ceramics Workshop Posters

Today I successfully printed and posted 75 posters all around campus for my Ceramics Workshops (with the help of my friend Tami--posting posters is hard work!), and I've already gotten 5 emails from interested students! I always assumed that most people don't notice these kinds of posters, but these certainly seem successful:

The poster was created by Shahzeen, a fellow freshman at Haverford. Isn't it pretty? The border is especially unique--I certainly would not have been able to design this! 

I'm getting so excited for my clay class. I'll update you as the workshops get going. In the meantime, I'm coming home on Friday for Spring Break--can't wait to see all my friends and family!

Ceramics in the Family: Recent Art Projects

Happy Sunday!

I recently got an email from my former art teacher and Nancy's current art teacher, Ms. A. She sent me a photo of Nancy's latest work of a art, a little boat.

Isn't it awesome? I'm so proud of her. She made this using slabs, a hand building method that I never use. It's much too difficult for me. The first slab project I attempted warped and the second one cracked like crazy. Apparently Nancy has this down pat. Not only does her boat look beautiful, but the form is neither warped nor cracked.

This photo was definitely a shot of humility! I worked in clay for seven semesters in high school and took classes at Krueger Pottery. Nancy is only halfway through her first semester and her slab skills are ten times better than mine. The kid has so much talent. I love it.

Things like this make me itch to get my hands on some clay. What have I been doing art-wise lately? If you read my post about James House, you'd know that the pottery wheels only cater to right handed people, so I can't use them. I've done absolutely no ceramics at Haverford so far. Well, I wrote a proposal for The Students Arts Fund, a grant of $5,000 distributed for student art projects by the Haverford Humanities Center. I wrote up plans for running a six-week ceramics workshop series, and budgeted for a Brent B wheel, clay, and some new sponges. The cost totaled to about a thousand dollars, so I was unsure if the Students Arts Fund thought my project would be worth it. A few weeks later, I got an email notification that they decided to fund the workshops and the wheel, and I'm so excited!

So I'll be teaching four lucky Haverford Students all about wheel throwing. I wish I could teach more students, but we will only have five wheels, and the funding is for wheel throwing workshops, not hand building.  It's possible I could teach hand building to a larger group later on, but we'll see.

Have you been working on any art projects? I love to see photos and hear about other's work, so comment below!

Is Ceramics Dying at James House?

It's fall break!

Now that I have a whole week off, I'm planning to get organized and back into my artwork. This weekend I explored James House, a center dedicated to student arts. It's supposed to be a space stocked with art supplies where students can go and create art on their own time.

See the super cool bird on the side?

The inside is also supposed to have "rotating murals." I'm not sure if the walls were always this way, but right now, they aren't exactly my taste.

To my delight, they do have a kiln.

They also have nice Brent Wheels. . .

. . .they are just very dirty.

They have clay too!

We do have some very messy artists here. . .

But apparently there are some clean ones too.

At one point, this was an educational space.

But right now, James House and the ceramics studio seems extremely under used. I'd really like to breath some life back into this space through teaching wheel throwing, but sadly, the wheels are right-handed! They are an old Brent Model B that only go one direction, counter-clockwise. Left-handed people throw clockwise. Most newer wheels have a reverse switch, so they can go both directions. 

I think it'd be a good investment for Haverford to purchase at least one newer wheel that can be used by the left-handed and right-handed students alike. The Brent Wheels they have are good, sturdy wheels, but they are old. Eventually they will need to be replaced anyway, so it would be a good idea to invest in a newer Brent B model. These newer Brents accommodate both the left-handed and right-handed artist and even come with a 10 year warranty. The $985 price tag is small when you consider the decades of use Haverford students would get out of this wheel!

I'd like to write a proposal for funding this wheel. Though I would definitely benefit from its use, I think others would benefit much more from what I can teach them about wheel throwing. It's almost a lost art on this campus--there are no formal ceramics classes, and the ceramics club seems to have disbanded. I'd love to teach classes, and I think there is enough interest in it that it could happen. 

We'll see. I've yet to come in contact with other ceramics artists on campus, and I'm really curious to find out who, if anyone, uses the ceramics equipment.