Mix & Match: Assemblage with Ceramics

with Allison Wade
CERAMICS 666 001 | 3 credits | $250 Lab Fee
July 21–August 2, 2025

In this course, students will create a collection of hand-built ceramic parts to be combined with found and/or constructed elements into hybrid sculptural objects. Inspired by materials at hand and the work of Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Arlene Shechet, and Linda Sormin (among others), we will think through the relationship of the part to the whole, intuition versus planning, time as it relates to material, and construction and conjunction methods. Over the two weeks, we will pinch, coil and slab build fire-able components while concurrently sourcing and fabricating non-clay materials. The final days of the session will be devoted to producing playful groupings for display and discussion. In addition, students will be asked to bring an item of old clothing to be deconstructed and used for our first assignment, a series of small pieces with unfired clay. A screening of Craft in America’s “Inspiration” episode and Art21’s Arlene Shechet interview, as well as short readings such as Joan Key’s “Readymade or Handmade?”, will complement studio time.

Allison Wade, Same Difference, 2024, partial installation view. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman.

Allison Wade (she/her) is a visual artist and educator whose practice is material-based, intuitive, and formally focused. She combines ceramics, textiles, wood, and metal into unexpected arrangements that explore the intersection of flatness and form. Wade’s process, which she likens to syntax, is closely aligned with writing. Deploying an idiosyncratic visual language, she explores the structural and formal contingencies of her materials and sculptures. Wade received an MFA from the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BA in English literature from Stanford University. She has been a visiting artist/lecturer at Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Ceramics Department, Kansas City Art Institute, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Miami University, among others. Residencies include Ragdale, Loghaven, Watershed, Ox-Bow School of Art & Artist Residency, ACRE, and the Vermont Studio Center, where she was supported by a John Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. Wade’s work has been shown internationally and nationally, notably at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and she is represented by Devening Projects. She currently resides in Chicago, where she is Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University.