The Formal, The Experimental, The Unexpected: New Investigations in Clay
Marie Hermann and Anders Ruhwald
2 week course || CER 648 001 || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $150

This course explores non-traditional and process-based ways of using clay for making sculpture. Students will work from the starting point that there is no right or wrong way of building with clay, and instead embrace the idea of working with clay as a way to explore the world we live in. We will be looking at a range of artists who engage experimental methodologies alongside deeply personal explorations in their creation of ceramic sculpture, including Kathy Butterly, Simone Leigh, and Sterling Ruby. We will also be reading texts including The Hysterical Material by Geof Oppenheimer, Ten Thousand Years of Pottery by Emmanuel Cooper, and Seeing Things by Alison Britton. Through these examples we will begin to understand how clay can be utilized as a medium to make sense of who we are and where we live. Students will embrace the idea of sculpture in its broadest sense, including both the formal and performative aspects of firing and working with clay. Students interested in participating in this workshop should be open to experimentation and un-programmed exploration. Students should expect to produce a body of work consisting of at least 3-5 finished pieces during the course which be presented and discussed in a final course critique. This is not a class for refining what you already know how to do, but a chance to find new ways of working with clay. 

FACULTY

Marie Herwald Hermann received her MFA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2009. Since then, she has exhibited extensively and widely. In 2018, her solo exhibitions included Bit by bit above the edge of things, Paris London Hong Kong, Chicago in 2017, Shields and the Parergon at Reyes Projects in Birmingham, MI and dusk turned dawn at Blackthorn at NADA, Miami. In 2016 she presented ‘Northern Light, Pontiac Rise’ at Galerie Nec in Paris and ‘A Gentle Blow to the Rock’ at Gallerie NeC in Hong Kong. She has also presented installations in numerous group exhibitions in the US, Denmark, Italy, China, Sweden and Germany. Her work is held in the collections of the Danish Art Foundation, the Denver Art Museum, the Servre Museum, Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Jingdezhen Ceramic Art Museum and the Rothschild Collection. In 2013 she was awarded the Kresge Artist Fellowship, the Danish Art Foundation grant in 2009 and 2016, and the Annie and Otto Johs. Detlefs’ grant for young experimental ceramic artists in 2010. Hermann was born in Copenhagen and lives and works in Chicago and is an Assistant Professor at SAIC.

Anders Ruhwald (born 1974, Denmark) is a sculptor and installation artist whose practice is grounded in ceramics. He lives and works between Detroit and Chicago and received his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2005. Solo exhibitions include Unit 1: 3583 Dubois at MOCA Cleveland in 2017 more than 30 gallery and museum solo-shows as well as more than 100 group-exhibitions around the world. His work is represented in over 20 public collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Denver Art Museum, The National Museum (Sweden) and The Museum of Art and Design (Denmark), From 2008-2017 he was the Head of the Ceramics Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Currently he is a Visiting Professor at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo, Norway.

Materials and Mechanics of Woodfire
Ashwini Bhat and Bruce Dehnert
2 week course || CER 647 001  || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $150

This course is centered around the wood kiln, from its mechanics to the material and conceptual considerations posed through its use. Students will have the opportunity to explore and produce a range of ceramic works, while learning about the relationships that ceramic forms can have to culture, history, personal expression, and social change. Students will be introduced to both historical and contemporary uses of wood-fired ceramics. Some of the reading materials in this course will be “The Kiln Book” by Frederick Olsen; “Theory of Craft” by Howard Risatti, and Building With Fire by Ray Meeker. Documentary film screenings include “Agni Jata” on Ray Meeker’s fired house project; “Traces” exploring theoretical issues regarding Western/Eastern approaches to the production of ceramics and “There Is No Customarily” on the Peters Valley Anagama. Presentations on firing wood kilns in the USA, China, Japan and India will be included. After the first week of making, the wood kiln will be loaded and fired as a team. The wood kiln offers a close up experience to the mechanics of kiln firing, in particular, how fuel and oxygen affect the quality and efficiency of the flame and in turn add to the final aesthetics of the surface. Over the course of thirty hours, the clay, glaze and wood ash will begin to melt in the high heat and create beautiful surface effects. Work will be finished by grinding, sanding and polishing.

FACULTY

Ashwini Bhat has an M.A in literature and a background in classical Indian dance for seventeen years. She studied ceramics with Ray Meeker at Golden Bridge Pottery, Pondicherry, India. Her work has been featured internationally in many galleries and exhibitions including, Lacoste Kean Gallery, Companion Gallery, In Tandem Gallery, Cohen Gallery at Brown University, American Jazz Museum, NCECA (2019; 2018; 2016; 2015 and 2013), Newport Art Museum; India Art Fair, Indian Ceramic Trienale; Indian Museum at FLICAM; and Woodfire Tasmania. Her work has been published in Riot Material, Ceramic Art and Perception, Ceramic Ireland, New Ceramics, Caliban, Crafts Arts International, The Studio Potter , and Logbook. She lives and works in Petaluma, CA.

Bruce Dehnert received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and his MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University. He has taught at Hunter College, Parsons School of Art and Design, The School of Art [New Zealand], the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dehnert is the recipient of a New Jersey Artist Fellowship Award, and other awards including three time Fletcher Challenge International Ceramics Award winner, the Settlor Prize in Sculpture, and a Carnegie Premier Award for Works on Paper. He was also a finalist in the Robert Wood Johnson International Figurative Competition. His work is held in a number of museums and collections including The Crocker Museum, the Yixing Museum of Ceramic Art , The New Dowse Museum, The Liling Museum of Ceramic Art, The New Museum, and The White House. Dehnert remains active as a writer having had articles published in numerous journals including, Studio Potter, Ceramics Monthly, and Ceramics: Art and Perception. He has written a number of forewords for exhibition catalogs and books, including Woodfired Pottery: Susan Beecher. His bestselling book, Simon Leach’s Pottery Handbook, was recently published by Abrams Publishing of New York City. He is currently writing a biography on noted Japanese artist, Takeshi Yasuda. In 2016, Bruce was named a Fellow to the International Academy of Ceramics. Currently he is Head of Ceramics at Peters Valley School for Crafts in Layton, New Jersey.

Power Objects and Alter Egos
Joanna Powell and Anthony Sonnenberg
2 week course || CER 649 001  || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $150

Artists throughout time have constructed symbolic figures and avatars to represent idealized versions of our identities. In this course students will develop alter egos as a means to explore personal, social, and political power dynamics through artistic practice. Unfired clay will act as a material metaphor for identities in flux and anchor more expansive approaches to sculpture, performance, and installation art and act as a point of departure for considering performative and ephemeral approaches to character development and world building. Artists including Caravaggio, David Altmejd, and Walter McConnell will be referenced alongside contemporary drag performance, comics and mythological narratives to present students with a wide range of strategies for constructing characters and environments. No previous knowledge or working experience with clay is necessary for this course, although a willingness to get dirty and take chances will be, take chances and possibly make a fool of oneself will be. Students will create projects using hand-building techniques in combination with found objects and activated through performance and installation contexts. 

FACULTY

Joanna Powell (b. 1981, Dallas, TX) holds an MFA from The University of Colorado,Boulder and a BFA from The University of North Texas in Denton. Through installation she contextualizes common objects with personal meaning. Her work is the result of thinking about longing, privacy, history and sexuality. Powell has exhibited her work throughout the United States. Her most recent solo exhibition, Everything belongs to you, was held at the Denison Artspace in Newark, Ohio. She has been a resident artist at The Archie Bray Foundation, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Kansas State University and Denison University. In 2015 she was granted an Emerging Artist award from the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts. Currently she resides in Helena, Montana and is a full-time studio artist and traveling lecturer.

Anthony Sonnenberg was born in Graham, Texas. He holds an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Washington in 2012 and a BA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Art History and Italian from the University of Texas, Austin in 2009. Crowns and candlesticks—things made in the moments just before a crash—are the subject of his work. His sculptural assemblages are made using a range of materials including ceramic, fiber, metal, papercut, drawing, performance, and photography. He has been the recipient of artist residencies at venues including the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, Yaddo Artist Residency, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, and Lawndale Artist Studio Program. He is the recipient of the 2014 RPF Grant from The New Foundation. His work has been exhibited widely across the United States and his first museum solo exhibition, Still Stage, Set Life took place in 2018 at the Art Museum of South East Texas in Beaumont, TX.

Remix: Clay and Print
Thomas Lucas and Roberto Lugo
2 week course || CER 646 001  || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $150

This course will experiment with hand drawing and printing images on clay using a range of techniques including screen-printing, relief and lithography. Students will also learn how to use different clay slips, stains, and modified underglaze and glazes on low-temperature clay bodies, firing in electric and Raku kilns. Students will look to poetry and graffiti aesthetics to develop visual language with image and text from a socially conscious perspective. Historical and contemporary references will include the work of “Cornbread”, considered the first graffiti artist, the unidentified street artist Bansky, and the written poetry on the city of Pompeii’s walls. Assignments will focus on the production of tiles, vessels and sculpture, as well as the potential for site specific and installation results. The form within the clay can serve as a platform for a range in voice, drawing together concepts such as hip hop, history and politics. Expect a wide range of images, texture, pattern, and color.

FACULTY

Thomas Lucas Born 1971 in Abington, Pennsylvania, Thomas received his MFA with a Merit Scholarship at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Before that he received a BFA in Printmaking at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. He has taught at Tyler School of Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Anchor Graphics, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Beacon St. Gallery, Gallery 37, and Penland School of Crafts. Thomas’s Visiting Artists’ Residencies include Penn State University, University of Notre Dame, Harold Washington College, The David Driskell Residency at EPI – Lafayette College, Easton PA. and SkopArt in Skopelos, Greece. His commission awards include Installations for Norwood Park for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and 87th station on the Red Line for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). He is also the Founder and Master Printer at Hummingbird Press Editions. As a Master Printer Thomas has published such artists as Kerry James Marshall, William Conger, Richard Hunt, Willie Cole and Barbara Jones-Hogu to name a few. His own artworks included in various private and public collections, exhibit nationally and abroad. He is represented by Lusenhop Fine Art, Detroit and N’Namdi Contemporary Miami-Detroit. Thomas was the former Director of Printmaking at Lillstreet Art Center. He now teaches full time at Chicago State University and teaches adjunct at Harold Washington College.

Roberto Lugo is a potter, poet and community activist. He is an Assistant Professor at Tyler School of Art where he teaches ceramics. Roberto Lugo’s work has been exhibited internationally and has been collected by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MFA Boston, and LACMA. Roberto recently completed his first museum solo exhibition at the Walters Museum responding to the ceramics collection and the history of slavery in Baltimore. Roberto has given lectures at Yale, Harvard, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.